


Watching the moon moving to the ocean shore

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 15:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 102
Words: 49,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: A collection of free-write drabbles originally posted to tumblr. Various pairings and universes. Title is from "Get Fucked Up" by Saves the Day.





	1. Bellamy/Clarke: After the Breakup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written February 8, 2016

He shows up outside her door at 2 am, five weeks and three days after their break up, and completely without warning. He doesn’t wake her. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea from the back of the cupboard (his, how fitting, she’ll think later; she hates the stuff but he used to drink it at the end of almost every day; she associates it with his evening glasses and his bare feet, all these little memories of him that never go away)–not drawing, not thinking, not wanting to sleep. The knock startles her first, then frightens her. She reaches for her phone, but there are no missed class and no missed texts, no clue at all. She holds her breath and waits for the person on the other side of the door to go away.

The knocking repeats.

She only has one light on, but maybe it’s enough, enough for whoever it is to know that someone’s home She can picture herself standing up, peeking through the peephole, but her feet don’t want to move. The knock is only an announcement, a way to get her attention—perfectly normal but for the hour—but it feels like an intrusion or a threat.

The third time, instead of knocking, he calls out her name.  Somehow it’s relief that floods her, not annoyance or resentment or confusion, and she’s at the door before she’s quite sure what he’s doing, wondering if the sight of his face will be as familiar as the gruff sound of his voice.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, instead of a greeting. She feels concerned, but sounds accusatory. His hair’s all in the wrong spot and she must not be quite what he expected either, because his confused frown turns, almost immediately, severe.

“I had a terrible idea that I needed to see you,” he says.

What an incredibly bizarre, sincere response. She opens the door all the way and lets him in.

“How’d you know I’d still be up?” she asks, sitting back down at the table and pushing the cold mug of tea across to him. He sits down too, and takes it, and doesn’t mention or perhaps even notice that they are in sync.

“I didn’t. I was driving past and I saw your light.”

“Stalking me?”

“Coming back from O’s new place. Why would you drink this cold?”

“It wasn’t cold when I made it. I’ve been up a while.”

The one light’s not much. His face is obscured by middle of the night shadows, and she can’t read it, which would be disconcerting if it wasn’t how she felt every day of that last month or so, the time they spent drifting apart, she’s not sure how or why.

“Is it weird that when you can’t sleep, I can’t sleep?” he asks, a little too quietly. She looks down, and nods.

“You going to stay?”

“You going to have me?”

The answer should come easily, but it sticks in her throat. _Always_ , she wants to say, and _obviously_. Instead she just stares, and wonders if she seems indecisive, and wonders how long it will take him to look away; he’s just staring back at her, patient, with an open look that says no answer would surprise him and no answer would insult him, and also that maybe he already knows.

“Yeah,” she mumbles finally, and closes her sketchbook, the heavy pages closing down against themselves with the softest of thuds.  “Yeah. Drink your tea and come to bed.”


	2. Miller/Bryan: The Arrest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written February 25, 2016.

One advantage to being the son of the chief guard: his dad can call in favors when life really goes to shit. Not the sort of favors that keep Miller out of the Sky Box but at least the sort that get him confined to quarters before trial. Most kids go directly to jail, do not pass go. And yeah, he’s not about to push his luck by asking for _just one more exception, I need to see him, don’t make me say please_ , but the Ark is small, and word travels, and it’s not been twenty-four hours since he first felt his wrists cuffed behind him that he hears the knock on the door.

Small bit of luck that his dad’s not home.

He opens the door and pulls Bryan in and—because he doesn’t want to have this talk, he cannot, and because he’s afraid he won’t get to do this again for a very long time—he pulls him in for a kiss before he even has a chance to open his mouth.

Bryan’s hands are fisted in his shirt.

“What the fuck did you _do_?” he mumbles, right against Miller’s lips. He’s breathing hard, as if he ran here, and Miller can feel the hard press of his lungs, desperate for air, breathing in frantic gulps. Miller’s hands slide down, arms wrapping around his waist, and Bryan’s hands slide up, arms around his neck.

“Got caught.” He’s smiling in that charming-asshole way he knows Bryan only pretends to hate, and he’s pretending too, pretending he can’t feel Bryan shaking.

“You’re still here, though… you’re still here—is your dad getting you out of it?”

Small shake of his head, and the smile falls away. “Don’t think he could even if he wanted to. Unless he wanted to risk getting floated too.”

“Hey, you’re only seventeen.” He presses the tip of his nose against Miller’s nose, as if trying to make sure they touch in as many ways as they possibly can. “You’re not getting floated. You may not even be convicted—”

“When was the last time Kane _didn’t_ win his case?”

Bryan’s hands clench, the slight, short bite of nails against the back of Miller’s neck, and he wishes he could apologize, wishes he could let this thin hope live. But that would be cruel. All he can do is kiss Bryan again, slow and sweet— _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ —and let them both pretend for a moment they’ll never have to let go.

“You’ll be out in a year, yeah?” Bryan murmurs. This is a hope just plausible enough that Miller won’t argue with it; he needs to hear it as much as Bryan needs to say it, and when he nods their noses bump into each other and their lips brush. “I’ll visit you every week.”

“Yeah, you’ll know where to find me.” The words fall too flat to be a joke, he doesn’t feel them, and Bryan just huffs out a shallow breath.

“Just—remember I’ll be waiting for you. No matter what. Remember that.”

“How could I ever forget?”


	3. Jasper/Monty: Zombie Apocalypse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written May 8, 2016.

“Do you think you’d survive the zombie apocalypse?” Monty asks him, which is just the sort of fucked up thing Monty would ask, out of nowhere, and for apparently no reason.

Well, not entirely for no reason. They did spend the afternoon caught up in a zombie movie marathon, because their friends have questionable taste: but at least Raven was there to mock the fake science, and Bryan was there to mock the cheap scares, and when the gore got particularly gruesome, Jasper could pretend to be bothered, just as an excuse to press his nose to Monty’s neck. Still, though, that was hours ago. It’s late now and dark; they’ve turned off all the lights and now there’s just the faint glow of the full moon through the windows left, a slash of light angling over the blankets. The rest of the dorm is probably asleep. They are not trying to sleep. They’ve pushed their single beds together so they can sleep side by side, their arms touching, their legs touching. Jasper feels a strange lightness, unusual for sobriety, that he assumes comes from the hour and the warmth of Monty’s body so close.

“I’d survive any sort of apocalypse,” he answers, now. Then he reaches out for Monty’s hand, twines their fingers together, and raises their hands into the light, just to look at them. “Because I’m tough. You’d survive too.”

“Well, obviously. I suppose we’d find somewhere to hide. Wait it out.”

“Mmm, no. We’d go out with semi-automatics and… axes and shit. Kill tons of zombies until we’re the last ones standing.” He sits up, leaning on one elbow, and places his free hand on Monty’s heart. Then he adds, very seriously, “If you’re going to talk about the apocalypse, you have to think big.”

“I thought you didn’t like gore.” Half his face is in shadow, half lit by the moon, but Jasper can see that he’s smiling.

“If it was a choice between putting an axe through a zombie and getting eaten by a zombie, I’d pick the axe.”

Monty sighs, as if contemplating this, his gaze wandering off into the far corners of the room and away from Jasper’s face. “Yeah, all right,” he concedes. Then he turns back again, the corner of his mouth quirks up, and he pulls Jasper down into a kiss, one hand at the side of his neck, fingers in his hair. He pretends that this is an impulsive, sudden thing, but it wasn’t, it’s not, and it doesn’t matter. When they finally pull apart, Jasper’s half on top of him, and their noses are touching, and Monty’s thumb is absently tracing the curve of his ear.

“I’m glad we don’t live in the apocalypse,” Monty murmurs, which is just the sort of random thing Monty would say, to make Jasper laugh and break the mood.

“Yeah, less time for this,” Jasper agrees, and leans in again.


	4. Bellamy/Clarke: Watching the Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written May 10, 2016.

She uses the rain as her excuse: why she won’t leave. The year’s first summer rain: the air thick and muggy and hot, the rain something more like a _downpour_ , thin dense slashes of raindrops, hissing off the pavement. She opens the window just enough to let the noise in, and with it a back-splatter of raindrops on the sill, and stands and watches, and does not think.

She’s wearing his shirt, not because she could not find her shirt, but because she wanted his. Because she’s not sure when this will happen again, or if, and she wants to take everything from the moment that she can.

When he puts his hands on her shoulders, sudden, his approach so quiet or the rain so loud, or both, that she didn’t even know he was there—she jumps. She says his name, _Bellamy_ , almost scolding, almost shocked.

And “ _Clarke_ ,” he echoes, in just the same tone, and kisses behind her ear. She tenses for just a moment, in the aftermath of surprise, and then goes limp, because he’s here, and if there’s something different to them now, it’s the right sort of difference: pieces that never quite fit now sliding into place, right where they should have been all along. His arms around her. Lips pressing a kiss into her hair.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmurs. 

She is telling the truth, the lovely and rare truth, when she says, “For once, nothing at all.”


	5. Clarke/Raven: Modern Witches, Party (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 24, 2016.
> 
> Next part: Chapter 6.

Clarke spends all afternoon painting Raven’s sneakers, while they sit on the front steps of the Griffins’ porch, and the sun slides down behind the trees. She always sticks her tongue out when she’s concentrating on her work particularly hard and Raven thinks this is cute, beyond cute.

“Shut up,” Clarke says, very quietly, because she’s putting the finishing touches on a blazing yellow-orange sun. Whispering is another sign of artistic concentration. “You do not.”

“I am allowed to find things cute,” Raven answers, and lifts her top palm up until the small burn of heat between her hands rounds out into a tiny little ball of blue flame, flickering. She smiles. It’s not the first time she’s managed it, but it was a bit easier this time, which is cool. She wants to tell Clarke to look but she doesn’t want to seem too excited. Of course she’s got this fire thing down.

“You going to be done with those in this century?” she asks instead, and flattens the bit of flame down once more.

“Not like you don’t have the time,” Clarke answers, very slowly, dotting tiny little orange pinpricks down near the toe.

“I’m wearing them tonight whether they’re done or not, you know.”

She expects some sort of argument, because Clarke’s kind of a perfectionist sometimes, when she lets herself be–it’s something they have in common except in Raven it’s fierce pride and determination and insistence and in Clarke it’s something else, something that builds up on itself, slowly–but she only shrugs. “Then you can wear one normal red shoe and one beautiful sun shoe. You can make anything work, babe.”

Raven smiles a smug little faux-bashful grin, then wiggles her shoulders like she’s trying to shrug a too-hot jacket free. She’s already tied her long-sleeved shirt around her waist, only her tank top still on, even though as evening hints at the edges of the sky, autumn chill starts to hint at the air. She’ll shiver when she stands. “Don’t I know it,” she answers.

Clarke flashes her a smile, then picks up her finished creation and twists it one way, then the other, for Raven’s approval.

“Another work of art,” Raven declares.


	6. Clarke/Raven: Modern Witches, Party (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 3, 2016.
> 
> Previous Part: Chapter 5.

She has a certain sense of expectation about tonight, yeah. A wordless and undefined expectation, caught up somewhere in the way Clarke carefully tests the edge of one of her designs, to see if the paint is dry, in the angle of the sun tinting through the trees as it slides toward the horizon, in the bright sheen of Clarke’s hair. She curls her toes around the edge of the porch step.

“Put them on last thing,” Clarke says, “right before we leave,” and Raven has to pretend she was listening, has to shake her thoughts free.

“Yeah. Yeah.” She stands, stretches all the way up, reaching her fingers toward the porch ceiling. “They coming to pick us up or do I have to take out my broom?”

She wiggles her eyebrows a little and Clarke, who is not looking at her, smiles as if she saw, or could imagine, the exact expression on Raven’s face. She is lining the shoes up carefully on the top step, like putting them on display. “Not that I don’t love air travel,” she answers, very _you know me_ , “but Wells is still planning to pick us up.”

“I still can’t believe he’s agreeing to come.” He is, admittedly, full of surprises, yet Raven had still always pictured him as more of a quiet-night-in sort of fellow.

“That’s nothing,” Clarke answers. “He says he’s just about convinced _Bellamy_ to show.”

Raven laughs, a short disbelieving _ha_ , then jumps down from the top step into the yard. The grass pricks up against the soles of her bare feet and she thinks to herself just how great it would be if she really could fly, broomstick or no–not just because it’s getting a little old, always bumming rides off friends. It just seems like it would be… enchanting. “No way,” she answers. “I’ll have to see that to believe it.”


	7. Raven/Gina: New Apartment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 19, 2017.

They have plenty of big dreams, and most of them involve being different people. Most of them involve taking off. At first, Raven didn’t think Gina had this in her: she seemed, at first meeting, equal parts sweet and content, and it’s funny, what Gina tells her later: _And you seemed so practical and single minded._

“I guess we underestimated each other,” Rave answers, and tacks the final corner of the map to the wall. A map of the whole world right above their bed. And on the ceiling a blueprint of stars and hanging above the weirdly ornate vanity that Clarke helped them lug in from the swap meet, that glaringly ugly thing that Gina kind of likes, anyway, a model of the moon.

They don’t have a real bed–yet, at least–just a mattress on the floor but it’s huge and Gina stacks it high with blankets and pillows and when they turn off the lights, the stars on the ceiling glow. Their first night, it rains into the late hours. There are bolts of lightning and, once, a burst of thunder so close that Gina jumps, and grabs on a little harder to Raven’s hip, an exhale of breath against Raven’s neck. And Raven lets out a shaky breath.

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m–I’m really, really _not_.”

She lets Gina roll her onto her back, against the extra pillows that she’d said, just an hour ago, might be– _a little much?_ –that now feel like the clouds themselves, or the sea about to swallow her whole. Now she feels herself slipping from herself and everything is warm and close. Maybe the power has blinked out. They would not know. Maybe they will wake and the world will be transformed outside their window. Maybe they will wake up and take off.

Legs tangle with legs and fingers twine with fingers and in the quiet every noise they make, little gasps and sighs and moans, a gentle exclamation _ah_ and the low hum repetition of each other’s names, each one feels like another touch, gently skirting across skin. Each one is a  surprising thrill.


	8. Miller/Bryan: Night Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 20, 2017.

Bryan wants to see the dropship but that’s not happening, there are too many bad memories there, so instead Miller distracts him with stories about the glowing forest, like those trees were fucking radioactive, literally probably: real Day-Glo fairy otherworld shit.

“Months on the ground and I don’t think I’ve seen anything really beautiful like that yet,” Bryan answers.

“Years of knowing you and I don’t think I’ve heard you say anything so pessimistic yet,” Miller counters, and pulls their only blanket up so high they’re almost hidden under it.

Bryan pulls it up the rest of the way and then they are, to the outside world, no more than simple shapes, unfathomable and secret and vague. And in the inside, they’re in a different universe. Warm and near. Bryan’s face is so close that Miller can see each of his lashes. He could count them, if he wanted to.

“You think there’s any chance,” Bryan asks, “that we’ll get–”

“ _Yes_.”

Miller doesn’t know any other way to say it, just what tone to give the words so that Bryan finally believes it: that they’re still here, and that they’ve lived through so many deaths that they are untouchable, blissfully indestructible, as far as they know, forever and ever, until the final moment they are not.


	9. Bellamy/Clarke: Under the Bleachers Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 26, 2017.
> 
> Next Part: Chapter 10.

All sorts of rumors swirl around Clarke her junior year, like so many fall leaves, and it is only fall, but she’s skipping English to stand under the bleachers with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders hunched up around her ears, waiting to be somewhere, or some time, or some one else. The new English teacher likes dimming the lights and sitting on the floor and talking about feelings and Clarke doesn’t want to talk about feelings. So she’s here, instead.

Most of the rumors have to do with her reaction to her father’s death, and they’re not really true, but they’re not really false either.

“That’s some postmodernist bullshit,” Bellamy tells her. He claims to have a free period this hour. He certainly does not have  English, because he would never skip English. She’s seen him trying his hand at poetry before. And yeah he’s not the crashing on a beanbag chair and spilling his guts type but he is the type, Clarke thinks, to have a lot of feelings.

He swing around the side of the bleachers and sits up on one of the steps, the whole structure rattling with his movements. Then he leans back with his elbows on the next seat up.

“Nothing is true so everything is true; I think that’s just me keeping up with the times,” Clarke answers and toes at the grass with her boot. “I just meant that it feels true.”

“That you’ve run away? And dropped out of everything–except, apparently, school?”

“So far.”

A gust of wind so strong it almost carries her off her feet hits them, and Bellamy reaches out and grabs her wrist, like he’s worried too that she’ll just fly away. “Not so fast,” he says, too low, and a second and more gentle gust eats his words. “Not so fast, not yet.”


	10. Bellamy/Clarke: Texting in Bed Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 27, 2017.
> 
> Previous Part: Chapter 9.

At the beginning of spring, when hard winter breezes have started to turn into something she might call _brisk_ , Clarke opens up her bedroom window, then climbs back under her winter blankets, and waits to feel refreshed. Waits to feel alive again. She’s glimpsed the driveway, knows her mom’s car isn’t home. That means she’s alone in the too-big house.

She grabs her phone with great purpose like she knows what she’s doing, but only toys with the idea of inviting Bellamy over. He hasn’t met Abby yet. .And Clarke’s not sure how keen she is on the idea of them running into each other by accident.

Also yesterday, after school, in the wasteland of the back parking lot, he told her that she could be “so brutal sometimes” and she’s not sure what she thinks of that either.

She hadn’t even done anything  more than put some shit-talking loser back in his place. And it just grates. That maybe he might think she could ever be brutal to him.

But it’s been about six months now and she has enough self-awareness to know she’s always going to come back to him, sometimes wary, usually at herself, and always totally unfit for the gentle way he looks at her up close. So she sends the message.

_It’s Saturday morning. Do you know where your Clarke Griffin is?_

She’d almost said ‘girlfriend’ but that doesn’t feel quite right.

_In bed??_

_I didn’t ask where you wanted me_.

She hopes that answer made him smile. She’s never flirty like this in real life, face to face. It’s so much easier to open up, to take even the smallest risks of the heart, through the barrier of a screen and each word only so many pixels, little comical speech bubbles announced with a gentle _ping_.

_The answer to that is my bed._

A sharp gust comes through the window, blows her white curtains in like ghosts, and she smiles.


	11. Bellamy/Raven: Zipper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 5, 2017.

Raven doesn’t mind being friends with someone she slept with once. Especially in a situation like this. Because it was seriously no big deal. She was in a bad place, Bellamy was a non-threatening and very hot acquaintance, almost a friend, trustworthy enough and definitely willing, and she needed a one night stand, a mindless night, to get over the crash and burn explosion that was her last serious relationship. Also known as her first serious relationship. But it didn’t mean anything, and afterward, they went back to being friends as easily as if their few hours together had never happened at all.

And for months, she really didn’t think about it at all.

Then they started getting closer. She marathoned documentaries with him in his apartment when his roommates were all out of town, and fell asleep with her head on his lap and his fingers in her hair. He sat next to her at Clarke’s found-family Thanksgiving dinner. They got into an argument about something political and kind of silly, in retrospect, and by the end they were yelling out their agreement at each other while everyone else stared and looked nervous. And later they talked it out for real over pumpkin pie and hot apple cider, lightly spiked.

He’s kind of infuriating but the most infuriating thing about him is that he’s just a little too much like her. That’s not the sort of thing she’s supposed to fall for but slowly, and annoyingly, she does.

The worst moment is when he’s standing next to the coat rack by her front door, trying to get the broken zipper on his ancient old coat to zip, while outside it snows heavy flurries and she’s thinking: why don’t you just stay. But all she does is step up close and bat his hands away and take the zipper in her own instead. “Here,” she says, “it’s not that hard. I got this.”

It is a little hard, though, the way the stupid thing sticks. They’re so close she can feel him breathing. When she finally gets it working, he takes her hands in his and she’s absolutely certain for half a second that he’s going to kiss her now, that that’s what this is: the moment before a kiss.

He doesn’t. He kisses her knuckles instead and says “Thank you, you’re a genius,” and that’s when she knows she’s totally lost.


	12. Miller/Bryan + Delinquent Squad: Fraud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 6, 2017.

“I’m definitely a fraud,” Miller declares, out of nowhere, not even aware if there is a conversation going on that he might be interrupting. He’s lounged across the Blakes’ couch, watching as Friday late afternoon becomes early Friday evening, and thinking, and not paying attention.

“Is this some sort of existential declaration?” Jasper asks. The words are a little stilted, because he and Monty are playing some sort of video game, and he’s a bit distracted too.

“Or have you literally committed fraud?” Murphy drawls, from his spot in the middle of the easy chair. He likes to pretend he’s not really friends with them, but he’s still around a lot, and it’s not bad. Miller’s been practicing his flirting skills on him for about six months now. Not that it’s helped him much.

“No, I mean–” He sighs. Then he sits up and slings his arms around his knees and says, “I am not as cool as I think I am.”

Monty shoots him a look that’s mostly arched eyebrow and Jasper declares, “Blasphemous!” and Bellamy rolls his eyes.

“Look around,” he says. “We could have told you that years ago.”

“He means he made a fool of himself in front of a boy,” Murphy translates, just when Miller was about to turn the conversation slyly away to something else. This is, unfortunately, exactly what he means. The boy in question lives in the same apartment building as Monty’s family and he’s stupid hot–with his.. _.arms_ –and his stupid playing basketball shirtless…thing–and he’s definitely gay, which is great except that it’s also not because it means going out with him someday is in the vague realm of possibility. So now that’s something Miller’s going to be thinking about and wondering about, a chance whose existence will tie up his tongue every single time.

He falls back down against the couch cushions again with a thud.

“This would be easier if I were into girls.”

“If you were into girls, you’d just feel uncool around girls instead of boys,” Monty reminds him.

“Or you could be into both and just be a fool all the time,” Jasper suggests.

“Thank you that makes me feel much better.”

He runs his hands over his face and sighs. He really should have known his friends weren’t going to be much help.


	13. Clarke/Maya: Event

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 7, 2017.

They meet at an art event, which does not surprise any of their soon-mutual friends, because art is all they ever talk about. They do not share the same taste. Clarke likes her art a little more traditional, landscapes and portraits, detailed scenery, and Maya’s more into the dark and the abstract, splashes of color, twists of shadow.

Two weeks after their first encounter (Lincoln’s gallery opening, both caught up staring at the eight-foot sculpture in the middle of the main room, his masterpiece), Clarke shows Maya her sketches. Bites her lip nervously while Maya flips through. She is very silent and her expression is unreadable; she takes a long time staring at each page. Then she announces that she finds them very beautiful, and points out her favorite, a sketch Clarke made of a fountain in the park, just to practice: but the intricate details of the base and the way the water splashes up, just so, stand out to Maya’s careful eye and when Clarke offers to give it to her, she says no. Keep it with your other work. Keep it all as one.

They don’t talk much at all about their real lives. It’s over a month before Clarke finds out any of the mundane details of her new friend’s life, before she shares any of her own. By then it is too late to undo what her feelings have become. And she’s still not sure she has to. They lie on their backs on the grass and the backs of their hands brush. The sun shifts out from behind a cloud, bright and sharp, and Maya pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes, and Clarke takes her spare arm and throws it over her eyes, and wishes their fingers were twined together, their palms touching. They are, in this moment, so close.


	14. Bellamy/Wells: Drowsy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 11, 2017.

Bellamy walks into their tent feeling dead on his feet, little better a shuffling, shambling zombie. It’s pitch black out and pitch black in, the veritable middle of the night, but that’s when he gets off the first night shift and anyway all he needs to do is shove off his boots and fall down from barely vertical to totally horizontal–as soon as his feet leave the ground he’ll be asleep and that’s fine by him.

It’s been a long day and a long half-night.

But when his knee bumps into the second cot by accident, he hears a sudden snuffling snort and then an “I’m awake, I’m awake!” and then–dammit, he didn’t _need_ that light–Wells is lighting their lamp and flashing light all over the place.

“I wasn’t trying to wake you,” Bellamy grunts, balancing badly on one foot as he tries to yank off his boot. “It’s not morning.”

Wells rubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist and blinks a few times. He pretty clearly has no idea what’s going on. All he says is: “I’m awake.”

“Don’t be,” Bellamy tells him. He sits down on his own cot to take off the second boot because the first one was too much of a struggle. “It’s two in the morning. Go to sleep.”

There’s no answer, but by the time Bellamy looks up again, Wells seems to be a little more subdued and a little more in control. He still looks bleary but not quite so confused. “Did you see anything?” he asks.

“No. S'all quiet.” He shoves his boots under the cot and then lets out a very long and deep sigh.

“Good.”

Wells is watching him. All Bellamy wants is for him to snuff out the lamp again.

That–and maybe something else.

“You want to move your cot over?” Wells asks, then, and at that, even though he’s so freaking exhausted he can barely get his mouth to move to form words, Bellamy manages a little smile. Maybe it’s dumb, and it’s not like he needs the help falling asleep, but still. Whatever they are, whatever this means, he always sleeps /better/ when Wells is next to him.

“Yeah,” he answers, nodding. “Yeah. Thanks.”

And even though it’s a chore to stand up again and to shift the light metal frame a few feet over, until it bumps against Wells’ and he can fall back down on it again, it’s worth it. In a few moments, Wells has brought darkness back to their tent again, and they’re lying curled up into each other again, waiting for dawn.


	15. Clarke/Raven + Octavia: Creative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 13, 2017.

Clarke calls her apartment her ‘studio,’ which is clever, because it is both a studio-sized apartment and a workspace, a mess of charcoal and watercolors and colored pencils and half-finished projects, barely any space to move around in it without being accosted by Art.

But that’s the dream, isn’t it? and no one claims to mind.

Today she’s wearing Raven’s _space babe_ shirt and a tiny pair of shorts she’s owned since high school, frowning with a graphite pencil between her teeth while she shades in some red on this portrait she’s working on, which is going nowhere, or nowhere good, and fast. Octavia is behind her, doing something impractical and elaborate with Clarke’s hair. And Raven’s sitting at the table, sorting scrap. She and Lincoln are doing some sort of found objects sculpture project together, the details of which Clarke hasn’t quite picked up yet. But then probably neither have they.

“If Lincoln were here, this would be a double date,” Raven says, as she picks up a handful of round silver washers and rolls them around her hand. Testing them, perhaps, and not even she knows for what.

“Yeah, a double art date,” Octavia answers. “Four artists in the same room at the same time, ignoring each other, and later they pair off and fuck.”

“Hey, just because your relationship is shallow doesn’t mean ours is,” Raven shoots back. “Right, ray of sunshine?”

“Hmmm?” Clarke looks up, jerking her head too fast and making Octavia curse, then plucks the pencil out of her mouth. “Sorry, barely listening. Who’s having sex later?”

“Not us,” Raven lies and pretends to be stern. She picks up a twisted, mangled fork and waves it in Clarke’s direction. “I was telling Octavia about our deep and everlasting love.”

“Oh, yes, that.” Clarke grins. The usual. She didn’t miss much. She blows Raven an exaggerated kiss, smiles when Raven rolls her eyes, and then turns back to her drawing, for now, for a bit, before she sets it aside again for more important things.


	16. Bellamy/Clarke: Road Trip + Separation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 15, 2017.

They text, of course, and Bellamy sends her pictures all the time, of eerie fluorescent motel lights and long stretches of highway and cute little small town diner menus and random downtown statuary, but more than any of this, Clarke gets excited about the post cards.

He always picks the cheesiest ones, depicting monuments and tourist attractions, and he writes WISH YOU WERE HERE!! in big block letters on the back of every single one. Like he’s trying not to sound too serious. But at night he texts her _I miss you_ and she knows that he means it.

 _O is snoring_ , he writes. It’s 11pm his time, 2am hers. But he knows she’ll be up.

 _She’ll deny it_ , Clarke texts back. Then she traces the outer edge of her phone two, three, four times, watching the little dots at the bottom of the screen. Bellamy typing, thousands of miles away.

_Of course she will._

_Did you see anything interesting today?_

_Gallery exhibit of a local photographer’s work. Mostly weird buildings and abandonment. I had to bribe O._

Clarke rolls over onto her back, tangling her blanket around her legs as she holds her phone above her face and smiles. It’s cool for summer and she has the air conditioning off, the window open, a stark night air wafting in. She wonders if he’s hot, where he is. If they’ve turned on the motel fan and it’s droning on, creaky and insistent, competing with Octavia’s snores to fill the silence.

_I’m sure she loved it. Deep down inside._

_Really deep down._

She’s trying to decide what to say, if she should veer off to some other topic or not, when–

_I miss you._

Raven jokes sometimes that she should be tired of hearing those words but somehow they hit her harder than _I like you_ did, maybe even harder than _I love you_ would.

She takes a long time to answer, wondering if she should say, maybe, a little more this time. But she ends up with the same– _I miss you too_ –and maybe soon it won’t be enough, but he’s gone for two more weeks and so for tonight, it will do.


	17. Jasper/Monty: Cuddly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> March 27, 2017.

They move in together as roommates–and best friends, of course–but after a few months it becomes, slowly, easily, almost inevitably, something else. Monty probably should have seen it coming. Jasper lies and says he did.

This is how Monty learns something new about the boy who’s been his other half since they were toddlers, the boy he thought he already knew backwards and forwards and upside down. This is how he learns that Jasper is _cuddly_. He doesn’t look like he would be. He’s too gangly and his elbows are too sharp; he shot up when he hit thirteen and still, a decade later, doesn’t look like he’s quite grown into his own limbs. But at night and even more so in the morning, the first moments of waking, he wraps the blankets around them both, curls his whole body around Monty’s like it’s easy, like this is the best way they fit, and tucks his nose in against Monty’s neck and keeps them both warm. He’s loathe to let go, and on Saturdays, when they set no alarms, he keeps Monty in their bed with terribly unfair kisses and murmured promises. _Just a few minutes more. Just a minute._

He’s less demonstrative in public but that might be for Monty’s benefit. They’re together for almost three months before any of their friends catch on–which is actually kind of hilarious. It’s only after Bellamy catches them kissing in Raven’s kitchen that he or anyone else in the group figures it out, and the awkward moment of invasion is worth it, for the way the expression on Bellamy’s face shaded from shock to something like relief (like the pieces of the universe were sliding finally into place), to embarrassment, to be caught staring as he was. Even now that everyone knows, they act mostly like they always have. Always sitting next to each other, shoulders bumping into shoulders, leg pressed up against leg, joking, laughing. Only sometimes their fingers twining up under the table, where no one can see. Monty says he doesn’t want to be that couple, that annoying, demonstrative couple that hangs out with the group but is never quite there, too caught up in each other and sickeningly sweet. Jasper agrees. They decide they’d rather be ostracized before they make anyone sick with their pet names or heart eyes.

Earning some groans with a dumb joke about weed is still acceptable, though. Some things, they decide, just really never get old.


	18. Delinquent Squad: Moving In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 4, 2017.

With so many people moving into one house at one time, there was no reason to spend money on movers, or that, at least, was the idea. Then Miller ended up carrying the back end of every mattress they (collectively) own and now he’s sitting on the sofa—which he also helped bring in—grumbling and wincing whenever he tries to move his arms. “Why did I get stuck moving all of the furniture?” he asks, for the third time, scowling as he very carefully picks up his beer.

“Because you have some sort of freakish superhuman strength,” Murphy answers.

Miller doesn’t think that’s terribly fair, and he shoots Bryan, perched behind him and rubbing his shoulders, a _you-too?_ look when he says, “He sort of has a point.”

“And you weren’t the only one moving furniture,” Monty adds. He and Jasper brought up several tables of various sizes and Octavia and Lincoln put themselves in charge of the bookcases.

“Or heavy things,” Bellamy puts in. He’s a little bitter too. Somehow he ended up with all of Monty’s books and Clarke’s stereo, while Raven told people where to go and spotted the mattress movers up the stairs, and Gina collected every pillow, blanket, and bedsheet in, possibly, the world, and transported them from the back of her tiny little clown car and up to the bedrooms.

Not that they’ve actually called final bedrooms yet, which means tonight is probably going to be a mess.

“Hey, how many pizzas are we getting, again?” Clarke calls from the kitchen, where she’s standing just inside the doorway, phone in one hand, menu in the other.

“I thought we were getting Chinese,” Octavia answers, looking up from the box helpfully marked ‘miscellaneous’ that she was sorting through.

“Or–does anyone know if you can get takeout from that Mexican place on Walden?” Jasper suggests.

Harper opens her mouth, maybe to answer, maybe to put in her own idea, but Bellamy raises his arms (somewhat painfully), gives them all a hard glare, and announces, “Pizza. We’re keeping it simple. And,” he glances around at the group, exasperated, but also fond, then back over his shoulder at Clarke, “better round up.”


	19. Raven + Monty: Science Fair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 22, 2017.

The science fair finals are held in the state capitol, in a big hotel with a grand entranceway and huge conference rooms, kept purposefully sparse and benign so they can be used for everything from conventions to town halls, one of which now houses Raven’s water filtration model–aisle 2, table 3, prime real estate if she does say so herself.

She’s proud that she’s here and she’s proud of her work and she’s a bit overwhelmed too because she comes from the mid-level-urban vast middle of the state and she’s not exactly used to high expectations. And everyone here’s built their whole lives on high expectations. She’s never seen so many science nerds in one place at one time _ever_.

At night the hotel transitions from the center of the Nerd Kingdom to a den of debauchery and bad life choices: a different party in every room, kids sneaking down the halls like secret agents, seeking out the strains of music barely contained behind each cream-colored door. Raven’s not really into the drinking thing but she finds a low-key gathering, just about her speed, one floor down and by the elevator. It’s way better than staying in her room, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the amorous noises next door.

She ends up in conversation with a small-town sophomore from the western part of the state, who’s brought his computing project, his best friend, his friend’s chemistry experiment, and a small baggie of weed, all the way to the big city for the first time–which he’s obviously a little bitter about. “I got knocked out in the semi-finals last year,” he tells her. And she doesn’t say, that’s pretty good for a freshman, but the way he rolls his eyes tells her that he sees the sentiment in the expression on her face anyway, and he doesn’t agree.

They’re sitting by the window, in a couple of uncomfortable hotel room chairs, while his roommate lounges on the floor and tells a small group of girls all about how much he loves his girlfriend back home. “Does he run that scheme a lot?” Raven asks. It strikes her as somewhat–very–distasteful, and she raises her eyebrows for emphasis.

“No,” the sophomore, Monty, answers. “It’s not a scheme. He’s completely serious.” He looks over at his friend, a look that becomes a stare, so that Raven gets the impression that this might be the first real rift of their friendship, coming into view. “He’s actually head over heels for her. He doesn’t even know he’s doing that thing where he talks about her obsessively.”

Raven shrugs. “Well–that happens.” She grabs him by the chin so he’s looking at her again. “Dream science project. Go.”


	20. Jasper/Monty: 4x11 Fix It Fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written May 11, 2017.

Everyone’s working long days now, consumed by this rebuilding-the-whole-Earth thing, but not even the most dedicated want to get up and out and off to work before sunrise, which is why Jasper only sees one person when he steps outside. Monty, sitting on the hood of the Rover with his face to the horizon, utterly still.

Jasper walks up to him slowly, not wanting to disturb him, not really wanting to startle him either when he reaches out to touch Monty’s arm and say, “Hey.”

Monty jumps anyway. But then he smiles. “Hey. What are you doing up?”

“What are you?” Jasper counters. “I came to give you this.” He hands Monty one of the old Arkadia mugs and then climbs up onto the hood next to him, mirroring his posture with his legs stretched out in front of him, so close the sides of their legs touch.

Monty peers into the mug with a suspicious look that Jasper would find insulting, if it weren’t so early in the morning. If he didn’t feel so light with the gentle yellow-pink colors of dawn.

“What, you think I’m saying good morning by handing you a screwdriver? It’s orange juice. And it’s real so drink.” He takes a sip of his own, as if to prove it’s not poisoned, then smiles as Monty takes a drink too and a pure look of satisfaction spreads across his face. “I mean what sort of person,” Jasper continues, “starts his day drunk?”

“The sort of person who went to sleep drunk,” Monty answers, and it isn’t quite a question. For a moment, they look away from each other, because even after all this time, some wounds still hurt.

Jasper could say something about all of that time, this long stretch of time that’s brought them here, but instead he asks, “Monty, do you know what today is?”

“Um.” His brow furrows as he tries to pinpoint just when he is, but then he shrugs—like it doesn’t matter anyway. “No. Tuesday, maybe?”

“It’s my birthday,” Jasper says, and holds up his fingers. “The big two-one.” And he sips at his orange juice again. “And four years sober.”

Monty’s not good at talking about things like this, but it’s enough that he wraps his arm around Jasper’s shoulder and pulls them as close together as he can. Because here they are. No one left alone. Still together and the sun slowly starting to come up, suffusing their new world with light.

“Hey Monty?”

“Yeah?”

He pauses a moment, sounding out the words in his head before he says them.

“I love you.”

“You say that all the time.”

Monty’s voice is unusually gentle, warm like spring air, a private voice only Jasper ever gets to hear.

“Yeah, I know.”

For a long time, they’re silent. Their mouths taste like oranges. Their hands find each other, fingers curling together, and the sun rises higher in the sky. Everyone else asleep.

“Hey Jasper?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”


	21. Monty/Raven: Night Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written May 27, 2017.
> 
> Next Part: Chapter 22.

He was supposed to be a one night stand, which sounds stupid now, some old cliche words like dried broken leaves after a first frost, but at the time–she didn’t care. She’d let Octavia drag her out to some club even though she wasn’t much for the music or for drinking but she just couldn’t stand the thought of being at home, either. So for a while she stayed at the bar. Lost sight of Octavia pretty quick. Let a guy buy her a drink and lost track of that too.

The truth was that she wanted to go home with somebody but she didn’t want to want it. It’s a bad habit she knows she needs to break.

This guy, not the one with the drink but someone later, who asked her to dance like he’d been dared to, and who didn’t want to talk any more than she did, caught her up somewhere between _I want_ and _I shouldn’t want_ and _I can’t think_ and _I don’t want to think,_ ended up dancing closer to her than she’d intended, than she’d expected, and when she felt one of his hands at her waist with some unexpected possessive thrill, she threw that moderation away and decided–fuck it. One night, one more time.

They went back to her place, dark and quiet, the sound of the lock clicking open too loud in the chill hallway, the sound of the door shoved open and their feet scraping against the welcome mat too jarring. She dropped her keys in the bowl by the door with a clatter. She never even considered turning on the lights.

He shoved his hands in the pocket of his jacket like he was afraid to touch her this time, in the silence, and stared out the living room window, with the view of the city outside, and all the lights. Stayed standing there for a long time. She stood behind him watching him for a long time.

Then she took off her shoes and her socks and walked on silent feet around him, stood in front of him, leaned in to kiss him. Not like they’d kissed on the dance floor, grasping, desperate against the sound of thrumming deep bass, but as gently as if he were glass.

He leaned into the kiss so slowly and with such care that time itself seemed to have slowed. And she pictured them, silhouettes against the midnight, and she let each touch and each beat of her heart echo through her into the deepest parts of her, and she barely remembered to breathe.


	22. Monty/Raven: Night Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 4, 2017.
> 
> Previous Part: Chapter 21.

Later, in the half light of her bedside table lamp, the room bathed in oranges and grays and her skin still on fire, her limbs weak, her heart beating fast, he leaned over her and pushed her hair out of her face, and she tried to remember the last time anyone had shown her such gentleness, and couldn’t.

Her legs were tangled up with his legs.

She didn’t want him to leave and he didn’t even try, and she thought, maybe he’s the staying the night sort, and didn’t question it. (Later, he tells her that he’s not, that he’s the sort to come home to his apartment in the middle of the night, to fall asleep in his still-made bed with someone else’s sweat still on his skin. He tells her that he’s seen the city at night too many times, how it smells different, how the air feels different.)

By the morning, everything had changed. Her head ached, not with drinking but from the angle of the sun. A stranger had slid halfway down her bed and his arm was draped over her stomach; his nose was pressed against her side. She rested her hand over her eyes. She tried to sort through her thoughts but they slipped clumsily away from her, each and every one.

A phone started buzzing, somewhere muffled in the distance. It wasn’t hers, she managed to move just enough to check, so she figured it must be his and she poked him in the side until he woke. “Someone’s looking for you,” she muttered. Her voice sounded scratchy and too low to her own ears. “Girlfriend?”

He laughed. Not what she was expecting. “Probably my roommate,” he answered. And then instead of sitting up and grabbing for his phone, still vibrating somewhere on the floor, he stretched his sleep-heavy limbs and pulled himself up just enough to start to kiss her hip and stomach and side, kissed her until her whole body wracked itself through with shivers, until the shivers became a pleasant warmth and an audible hum.

“Not bored of me yet?” she murmured.

“You’re too confident a woman to wake up with two self-deprecating remarks in a row.”

This is true but she almost argued anyway, just because he didn’t know her; how dare he talk as if he knew her. She just wasn’t used to waking up to someone in her bed, someone wrapped around, someone in her space.

“Shut up.”

“No.”

He was smiling; he was kissing up the middle of her body, to her neck, to her mouth. To her mouth until she was kissing back and her hand grabbed at the back of his neck and she didn’t want to let go. Still their mouths tasted like morning breath and old sleep, and they had to pull away after only a few moments, laughing, at themselves perhaps and their enthusiasm, and only then, at last, did he finally sit up and pull away.


	23. Jasper: Ringing the Bell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 15, 2017

On the walls, ceiling, stairs, and rafters leading up the tower to the bell, everyone who’s ever rung it has written their name, scratched into the surface in distorted, awkward letters. The narrow passageway is stuffy and hot–he’s not claustrophobic, yet, but he might be after this–and there’s a long line of people going down the hallway and out to the main stairwell waiting for their turn to climb up here after him and let out a long, booming chime across campus. Still he has to pause a few times, just to stare at the vast, vast number of names. So many people. So many people who have come before.

The actual ringing of the bell lasts only a minute, and it’s anticlimactic in a way. The sound is as stale, heard from within, as the air itself. Muffled by its closeness. Not like what he’s heard walking across the lawn outside, ringing bell after ringing bell, every year as another class prepares to move on. Also by the time he himself has pulled the cord the walls are starting to get a little too close and he’s ready to get out of the too-narrow space, to somewhere he can breathe again.

When he steps out into the main hall again, he’s greeted by Monty and Monroe, who have both already had their turn. Monty wraps an arm around him. It’s an affectionate gesture of the type he doesn’t usually offer up, just like that, and it’s nice. Jasper considers pulling him closer with one hand fisted into the bottom of his shirt, until their noses bump and it gets hard to breathe again, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t. Because he doesn’t really get the bell ringing tradition, anyway. Why it’s a big deal. And it’s not really a romantic gesture time.

Sometimes he just gets it into his head, that he’d like to make a romantic gesture.

They head downstairs and grab sandwiches from the cafe because Monroe never ate lunch and is starving. And Jasper’s always hungry. It’s weird to think it will be summer in a few weeks, only the small hurdle of exams ahead of them, and then Monty will be gone across the country from him for three months, and when they get back, they’ll be seniors. Time stretching out and out ahead of him, to a fixed point, beyond which everything becomes hazy and muted. Not that he has to think about it now. But traditions and such. Isn’t that what they’re for? For making one think?

“Are you thinking or scheming?” Monty asks him, narrowing his eyes with suspicion.

“Contemplating the vastness of time,” he answers, because he’s fairly sure Monty won’t take that too seriously.

And he doesn’t. “Yeah, sure,” he laughs, and takes the chance to squeeze Jasper’s shoulder, and Monroe rolls her eyes. This, this moment, is maybe significant. Or maybe it’s nothing and in a few weeks or months it will fade entirely from his memory.


	24. Monty: Raising the Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 19, 2017.
> 
> Part of the Autumn 'Verse.

The first time Maya shows up it’s because of Raven. Because Raven has decided she wants to find the dead. She invites a few people over, late August, air heavy with thunder, ready to crack open with lightning. Monty doesn’t believe in any of it. The room is dark and humid and close, and at first she keeps all of the windows closed, so he can’t breathe. Can’t breathe but the deep burning of incense and smoke. Raven makes everyone close their eyes. There’s a beating in his temples and Jasper is holding his hand.

Clarke asks what they’re supposed to be doing and Raven says to just shut up.

The beating becomes a pulsing and Raven takes his other hand.

He’s pretty sure something is floating. He’s not sure what. He just has a sense of the unmoored, close by.

One crash of thunder breaks. He pictures deep dark clouds rolling in. And the heat, scorching off the ground, the dry grass, cracked grass under a long drought. Dust and dirt crumbling off the buildings. Dust and dirt streaked on the long warehouse windows.

Outside the city where the houses fall back and fall down and weeds start to grow up, strangling, tangling; they drove out there last week and slept under the stars. He’s not sure if Raven or Jasper is holding on more tightly to his hand but someone’s nails are digging into his skin and something is whispering up his neck. The smoke.

Nothing happens and the circle breaks. Raven blows out the candles.

She stands, shaking out her arms like the tension in them hurts her, frustrated huff of breath. Monty stares up at her, watching as she takes down her hair and it falls over her shoulders, cascading down so he can’t take a breath deeply; his lungs stutter.

Jasper’s still holding his hand so when Raven opens the window and a gust of wind blows in, he has at least an anchor. Jasper’s fingers clenching around his fingers.

The wind is too cold and too strong and he feels it too deeply sliding in right under his skin.

“Did you feel that?” Clarke asks.

Raven slumps down against the wall and covers her head with her hands.


	25. Bellamy: Being Cool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 22, 2017.

Bellamy wasn’t supposed to be the popular kid in high school. He didn’t start out freshman year that way at all. He’d been quiet and studious all through middle school, kept his head down, kept to himself. He had a lot of responsibilities at home, it wasn’t worth the risk of putting himself out there too much, getting distracted. Then he hit 17, got a little taller, grew out his hair some, filled out a lot–started looking like a man, his mother said, smoothing her hands down from his shoulders as she held him at arm’s length, just, she said, to get a look at him. She didn’t say _like your father_ because she never talked about him, but Bellamy figured that was what she meant.

And people at school noticed. Girls noticed.

It was flattering.

And because some of these girls were very pretty, or very popular, or both (often both), and because he was a teenager and only human, after all, he responded.

The girls he was really interested in still didn’t even see him but Bree, with her sweet little laugh and the way she was always touching his bicep when she talked to him, like she wanted to see if he was real, like she just wanted any excuse for her body to come into contact with his body…Bree was definitely interested. He ended up kissing her in the staircase of her best friend’s parents’ house, on a Saturday night when he probably should have been home, and again her fingers curled around his upper arms but tighter now, holding on. He had her pinned against the wall. His hands at her waist, which seemed thinner, lighter, smaller than he’d imagined, like maybe if he wanted to, he could just lift her right up and off her feet.

She probably would have liked that.

The thought almost made him laugh. He was grateful, then, more than anything, when he felt her pull him just a little closer, when she pulled back from the kiss and nodded her head to the side, up the stairs, toward the bedrooms, because that wasn’t funny. Not in the least. He tripped on his own feet going up.

The popularity never felt like anything more than a hollow, simple, silly thrill, but that was more thrill than he’d ever felt in his life, so for a while at least, he didn’t care. All through junior year, he didn’t care. His main vices during this period were his pretty classmates and late nights, so–he decided later, waking up in late August just before his senior year, so early the sun hadn’t risen yet, and barely aware, for the first moments of waking, that he wasn’t at home–really, it could have been worse.


	26. Bellamy/Clarke: Observation Deck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 24, 2017.

Heat rises, so the observation tower is the worst place they could be, or among the worst, in the middle of their first heat wave on the ground. But Bellamy is on duty and Clarke wants to watch the sunset and her room, in the old Alpha Station, is even worse.

She has a song in her head and she’s swaying slightly, swaying to the slow rhythm of it, while she sits and dangles her legs down over the ground. Bellamy asks her what she’s doing and she snaps back suddenly to herself, aware for the first time how long she’s been gone, and where.

Earth is so very beautiful. From here, she can see a far stretch of land, trees, distant hills. She pulls herself up with as much grace as she can and takes Bellamy’s hands and picks one of the million questions in her head at random as she links her fingers up through his. “Do you ever think about how much of the Earth we haven’t seen?”

He gives her a skeptical look. “You’re distracting me at work.”

“I’ve been here for half an hour. You haven’t complained yet.”

“You weren’t distracting me before.”

The song’s still floating, slight lovely half-remembered strains, through her head, and she tries to get him to sway with her. There is a sheen of sweat over her skin. Even as the day ends, it is still so unbearably hot, and they are so high up, and the horizon is so far away, and they could do anything, that’s how it feels.

She tries again: “Did you ever get to listen to music on the Ark?”

“What if someone came and I wasn’t paying attention? This isn’t very responsible, future Chancellor.”

Clarke groans, exasperated with him, and tilts her head back to look at the sky, streaked through with brilliant pink. No sunsets and no sunrises either on the Ark. Just stars, stars, stars.

“I will never be Chancellor,” she declares.

Bellamy snorts, disbelieving.

“What do you think about when you’re up here?” she tries, again. “Do you get distracted by–anything?” How beautiful it is, maybe, or how vast.

“No.” He pulls his hands from her hands. Maybe it’s his old training coming back, or maybe he’s more bone-deep soldier than he thinks, or maybe this is just what anxiousness and unease does to the human frame, but he’s standing unnaturally straight and still, facing out away from the settlement, facing away from her. “I just do my job.”

Clarke sighs. Her questions float down, every query and every curiosity, settling down into the dirt and the dust. She is silent for a long while. Wipes the sweat from her forehead, feels the warm heat of summer like another skin. Then she comes to stand behind him, hands reaching up to his shoulders, palms sliding slowly down his back. She circles her arms around his waist and rests her cheek against his back, next to his shoulder blade. “Do you want me?”

She feels something, deeper than a breath, lighter than a shudder, shiver all the way through him, staggered and soft. “I thought you’d never ask,” he murmurs, and turns around.


	27. Raven/Gina: Making an Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 1, 2017.

After Clarke sells the loft and they scatter, Raven moves west, and south, to the desert where she wears a lot of reds and grays, takes up with a bar owner, and fixes cars. The hard feel of tools in her hands again makes her feel better. She no longer owns a computer and she throws out her old phone. She swears off men entirely, but retreats back into the closet. Only the bar owner, sweet laughter in public, dreamy wafting stories at night, knows the truth, or part of it.

She does not tell Gina about the east coast, the city, or the people she left behind.

In the summer, they drive out from their small town through the desert, nothing but highway and dirt and horizon, Raven behind the wheel and Gina’s feet up on the dash, to the city, where Gina knows some people. Underground people, she says. Raven doesn’t know exactly what that means.

Her friends all kiss each other on the lips when they meet, and the first one to wrap her arms around Raven leaves behind the taste of cherries on her lips. They are all beautiful. Most of them in unexpected ways. They meet in a basement apartment and share drinks and stories and Raven just has a sense, deep in her, that anything is okay here. She puts her arm around Gina’s shoulders; later, Gina rests her head in Raven’s lap and Raven twirls her fingers round and round her curls, making and remaking this scene in her head, so she’ll remember it later. One of the women turns off the lights when dusk starts turning into darkness, and lights candles instead, and Raven slides her fingers down through the film of condensation on her glass and tries not to think that this moment reminds her of another ones, ages ago–another life.

 _Who are you?_ they might ask, and she would not know what to say.

When the room becomes claustrophobic she begs off for a moment, and walks upstairs and outside to stand on the pavement, rubbing her arms against the cool night chill. It gets so cold at night here. She stares at the buildings, which are mostly gray and shadow, and the back at the small flame flickers she can see through the windows. Darker shadows moving there, too.

She’s just waiting for one of them to ask, _who are you,_ so she can admit she doesn’t really know.


	28. Monty, Jasper, and Raven: Moving to the Attic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 3, 2017.
> 
> Part of the Autumn 'Verse.

Monty moves up to the attic the summer before freshman year. For the first couple weeks, he doesn’t have anything more than a mattress and a desk and his laptop, and the circle window that looks out the front of the house, and the big rectangular windows that look out the back.

Jasper declares it “less cool than I thought it would be” as he stretches out on the mattress, his feet hanging off the edge, and his arms folded behind his head. “You need to at least get a fan or something,” he adds. “Fucking sauna in here.”

In the middle of August it’s a fucking sauna everywhere.

“You really didn’t want to take anything from your old room?” Raven asks. Her space is crowded with tools and projects and bits of machinery, and books, and scraps of newness, and the tatters of the old, and she seems uncertain in a room this open. She’s sitting cross-legged against the wall next to Jasper’s feet, eyes darting about, unsure where to settle. “Like–not even a real bed?”

Monty shakes his head. “I’m starting over.”

“New year, new school, new start?” Jasper arches up an eyebrow.

“Something like that.”

“Let me make you something at least,” Raven tries again. “A bookshelf or a little robot friend or–Clarke can paint you something.”

“Just let me have a few days of this, okay?” Monty answers, holding up his hands to stop the cascade of her ideas he can already see bubbling up. “Just the rest of the week.”

Jasper pokes the toe of his ragged sneaker against Raven’s knee. “He’s clearing out his hard drive.”

Raven frowns.

“He’s doing a _cleanse_ ,” Jasper clarifies.

This is little better but Raven seems content enough to roll her eyes and sigh and swallow down any other criticism she has, for now, at least. That’s good enough. Monty can’t explain it but somehow he knows the space will build itself around him, if he’s patient.


	29. Bellamy + Jasper: Worksong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 6, 2017.
> 
> Part of the Autumn 'Verse.

Every time Bellamy finds himself hating his job, he remembers that Jasper is a grocery story cashier, and he reminds himself he can’t complain.

“It’s–actually literally the worst, yeah,” Jasper says, and kicks his heels against the side of the stone structure where they’re sitting. It’s the side of a gigantic planter, filled with leafy plants that are meant to give downtown a clean, new, alive look. Only semi-working.

“I thought you were going to say it’s not that bad.”

“I was, but then I remembered that it is.”

The corner of Bellamy’s mouth uptilts in a slight smile.

“You know you…could quit.”

Jasper takes a long drink from the cardboard coffee cup he’s holding, shakes his head as he swallows. He’s not grown out of that lanky phase yet, and every movement–the way his chin juts out as the hot liquid goes down, the way his hand reaches back so he can scratch the back of his head, the way he rolls his shoulders back, fidgeting–looks slightly off center. “Mm, then how could I afford this fancy coffee?”

Bellamy grabs the container out of his hand, easy, and takes a small sip himself. “This is black coffee with sugar,” he notes. “Two sugars.”

“Okay–” Jasper draws out the word, snatches his drink back and holds out away from Bellamy–“how could I afford other things?”

“I thought Monty grew your other things?”

“Shut up.”

Bellamy huffs out a short laugh, and leans all the way back, so his hands are in the dirt. “That is the argument of a man who knows he’s defeated.”

Jasper just hums, finishes the last of his coffee, and tosses the empty container in a surprisingly graceful arc all the way into a nearby trash can. “It’s better than nothing, though,” he says, finally. “The job. You know how it is.”

“I do,” Bellamy agrees. “Yeah.”


	30. Bellamy/Raven: Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 12, 2017.

Inside: all the lights off and the tv giving off a neon glow, flashing movie sequences blaring.

Outside: crickets and the cool concrete of the porch underneath her bare feet, darkness, streetlights visible but distant, lighting up the road. She rests her hand against the porch column, leans out and over the lawn.

Inside a half-dozen people, who have been talking all day, no longer talking. Watching, resting, drifting.

Outside she is so intensely present she could not sway away from this moment if she tried, and Bellamy is standing next to her, and one of his hands is on her waist.

It has been a long time, years, since she felt Bellamy’s hand on her waist, or his touch anywhere, or stood this close to him. But she remembers. She remembers in that distant way she remembers movies she watched as a child or books she read in adolescence, remembers as a series of pictures, devoid of sensation, jumping across her mind’s eye, frantic and unsettled. She remembers but she does not feel it, anymore, brilliant sharp and close like their old fireworks.

Still she does miss him, and the longer they stand together, the longer she imagines him mulling her name over and over, painting it with his tongue against the inside of his teeth– _Raven_ , **_Raven_** , in his deep voice–the more she wants to let herself sink into his arms.

She didn’t think he’d ever want to live out here in so much country: how the mountains rise up in the distance, how the house itself sits slanted on the rise of a hill. She never thought of him as someone who would retire, in the wistful sense, who would fall backwards and out of public life. Quiet with his library, his books. Perhaps she should have seen it, this whole time. Perhaps the dew on the grass in the morning or the fog as it shifts through the trees is all he wants.

Raven has been living in a one room apartment in the city, flying farther from herself every day, returning in the evenings to sit out on the balcony and watch as dusk settles and a pattern of artificial light creates itself in front of her. She drinks a lot of coffee in the morning and a lot of tea at night and she’s not sure if she’s healthy but she’s trying, trying to move on.

She knows even less if Bellamy is moving on or moving back, sinking into the past, where he feels comfortable.

But his hand is still on her waist and she’s still waiting, no longer for him to speak, but for her own words to come to her.


	31. Bellamy/Clarke: Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 19, 2017.
> 
> Part of the Autumn 'Verse.

The winter before Clarke and her mom move away, life starts going to hell. Ugly slush on the sidewalks and cold snap followed by cold snap. He’s downtown buying coffee at Gina’s little place when a sludge of snow falls off the awning, cracks one of her small outdoor tables in two and makes everyone in the whole place jumps. Gina holds her hand over her heart, pretends she’s fine but won’t let go. Bellamy walks out with her to inspect the damage.

The snow had just started to melt, turning black and pitted with dirt, but soon the temperatures will drop again, and it will all freeze, and the roads and sidewalks will turn to ice.

Not that he knows any of that, in the moment.

He’s late to meet Clarke but he brings her a coffee with two sugars, the way she likes it, and she’s not on the edge of her seat waiting anyway. He catches her standing in the book store, in the window, reading the paper. When he sees her, though, he hesitates outside, stands for a long moment on the street, no gloves, the outside of his hands cold, his fingertips and palms too hot from their drinks, and watches her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Her brow is furrowed and her mouth parted. So he knows it’s not good news. And he tells himself that’s what makes him hesitate, even though she’s expecting him, even though they have a date–in a manner of speaking. That she’s obviously distracted anyway and he doesn’t want to interrupt.

Not that she’s very beautiful, and he doesn’t want to interrupt.

Eventually, he raps awkwardly on the grass with his knuckles, and when she looks up he holds up the coffee cups and raises his eyebrows. Clarke looks startled for a second, then nods fast, holds up one finger, and disappears with her paper out of view.

She’s outside again two minutes later, with the paper that she’s bought tucked under one arm. She grabs her coffee from him easily, their fingers brushing against each other for the briefest of moments, and Bellamy asks her what’s wrong. It’s not just the look on her face. He can just tell.

“Just saw the headline,” she answers. “Kane has a rival for the mayoral race.”

“Isn’t that…the wonder of democracy?” Bellamy asks, slowly, like he’s not sure what the problem is, even though: he does like Kane, and more important, he trusts Clarke.

“Democracy’s less wonderful when people like this run,” she says, and flips the paper over awkwardly, shaking out the creases, so he can see. “Plus–my mom’s leaving her seat.”

“What? Why?”

That one’s a little more of a surprise, even more so than the serene face that stares at him from the newspaper’s front page. He takes it from her but barely even glances at it, waiting for an answer instead.

Clarke just shrugs. “I don’t know. She doesn’t want to talk about it.” She stubs her toe against the sidewalk, lets it slide into another defeated off-white snowbank, crunches the old snow beneath her sole. “That’s the weirdest thing of all.”


	32. Jasper/Monty: Billionaire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written August 24, 2017.

“If we’d lived on Earth before the bombs, we would have been rich,” Jasper decides. He’s sitting with his back against the starboard window; some giant sheet of plastic made over a hundred years ago, by humans who thought they’d launch themselves up into space and then get to come back home, that’s all that’s separating him from the last vacuum of darkness itself–but he’s not worried. Monty’s holding his hand so it’s okay. Monty’s head is in his lap and Monty’s fingers are playing with his fingers so it’s okay.

“Yeah?” He sounds skeptical. He sounds like he’s about to laugh, like he wants to laugh but he’s too tired, so the sound just infuses his voice instead, makes it lighter and his words trip sprightly over themselves. “Why? Where would we get all that money?”

“We’d invent something really cool.” Jasper grins, so confident in it. Monty’s so smart, and people used to pay a lot for computer shit. That’s what Jasper’s read. “Then we’d buy a big house in… California.”

“That’s the one on the ocean, right?”

“Lots of stuff was on the ocean, Monty.”

They’ve been sitting like this for a long time and Jasper’s legs are falling asleep. But his brain’s still buzzing somewhere distant and warm, somewhere with a coastal breeze, and Monty brings their hands down so they’re resting on his stomach, which feels nice, a new nice thing Jasper’s never thought about before. Monty’s t-shirt is worn and soft.

“Okay, but we’d live on the ocean,” Monty’s saying, from somewhere on the beach. “Huge house. Bigger than Farm Station.”

“Bigger than Alpha.”

“Bigger than the Ark!”

It’s hard to imagine something bigger than the Ark. They’re giggling and every jerky movement of Monty’s torso echoes through Jasper’s hand and then straight through up his arm and to his own lungs, like he’s two people laughing, and he doesn’t even remember why anymore.

“I think we’d have a great big kitchen,” Jasper says, when Monty lets go of his hand, and starts tracing patterns on the window instead. Jasper keeps his own palm right where it is, and his other hand on Monty’s shoulder, and his back to the stars. He doesn’t need to look at anything other than Monty’s forehead or his collarbone or his belt because he feels all of space right there behind him, seeping in through the window, drawing him in and drawing him back. “We’d throw big parties.”

“We’d have a pool. And a big garden in the back.”

“What’s in the garden? What sort of plants grew in California?”

“Joshua trees. Lemonade berries. Elegant Clarkias. Blazing stars.”

He’s so smart. He’s so smart, how he just knows all these things.

“Elegant Clarkes…. Are you making that up?”

Monty scoffs, then reaches up blindly to touch Jasper’s face: no anger at all and less coordination, how he just lets his hand fall back through the air until his fingertips reach Jasper’s jaw and cheek.

Jasper laughs–“What are you doing? Stop–”–and links their fingers together again.

“It is all true,” Monty insists. He sounds defensive and young but even as he speaks, he sighs, and turns so he’s facing out into the room and his shoulder is digging into Jasper’s thigh and Jasper’s arm is wrapped around the middle of him, safe.

Jasper lets out a breath so slow and so calm that it is a noise itself, a settling deep inside him, an echo of the waves. “It is all true,” he repeats solemnly. “That was really us, once. We were billionaires and we lived on the beach and we knew how to swim and we watched the sunset every day and we had blazing stars in our garden. Show me a picture of them tomorrow. Monty?“

He waits a while for an answer (”Monty?” again) and then closes his eyes.


	33. Jasper + Monty: Crisp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written August 29, 2017.
> 
> Part of the Autumn 'Verse.

Crisp wind that feels, as it blusters past, pulling at the ends of scarves, like biting into a red apple feels; and at night when silver clouds skid across half-hidden moons; and the howls come up from the streets and the distance, and everyone stays inside, just in case: that is what autumn feels like. How it descends down and then through.

Jasper is lying on Monty’s bed with his feet hanging off the edge and his head stacked on the pillows, looking at the ceiling, how it slants up, and listening to the noises outside. They sound closer than they used to. He wonders if she’s out there.

Monty professes not to believe, but Jasper knows what he saw and he knows what he heard. He carries it with him like coins in his pocket. He waits and he teaches himself patience.

It’s late and he’s not going anywhere tonight, so there’s no hurry, no hurry in anything. The leaves have started changing color but not yet falling from the trees. The branch that always taps at Monty’s window taps at his window, scratches at his window, and every time it does, in a gust of fall wind that brings the noises closer, rattling around like skeletons, rattling, Monty looks up. As if he weren’t used to it. As if this didn’t happen all the time.

He’s sitting on the floor by his bed, legs crossed and laptop open, and every now and then his fingers click at the keys. A foreign sound. Jasper lets his hand fall to the edge of the bed, lets his fingers play through Monty’s hair.

 _Do you hear it?_ he wants to ask. _Do you hear it?_

He’s afraid that Monty will say there is nothing to hear. It’s no hallucination, no, but it’s September now so there is nothing unusual about these cries from the chill depth, the lengthening darkness. The town’s changed but not that much. It’s changed and he’s changed and he knows more now–but not that much more, yet.


	34. Miller/Jackson: Staying Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 6, 2017.
> 
> Next Part: [Chapter 43](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12257070/chapters/27853437).

Miller doesn’t want his housemates asking too many questions about this new thing he has going on, so he changes the subject every time the subject of ‘the new guy’ comes up. This is partly because it’s new and he’s not sure where it’s going and he doesn’t need his friends interrogating everything, knowing too much, distorting the delicate balance; and partly because he’s embarrassed at the silly way they met; and partly because they’ve been hooking up for a couple weeks now and they still call each other by their last names. That probably isn’t normal.

But his last relationship, his only relationship before this, was exceedingly normal and now it’s over, so he’s just going to do what feels good, for now. Worry later. Maybe never worry at all.

Mostly they spend their time at Jackson’s place but sometimes Miller sneaks him over to the big house on Fairview, late, on nights he’s pretty sure no one will be around. It’s hard to tell because not everyone he lives with keeps normal hours, and he’s not sure what he’d do if he ran into Monty reading in the living room or Murphy and his girlfriend cooking in the kitchen at some ungodly hour, midnight, or one, but so far that hasn’t happened–they’ve been lucky.

Over the last couple of years, he and his friends have scrubbed the house of most of its former identity, but bits and pieces of his grandmother’s life still remain. Stray objects that he doesn’t even notice anymore, that he looks right through. Odd out of place details of his day to day. Now he’s washing his hands and his face in the cramped half bath at the end of the hall that no one ever uses, its walls still painted a peeling pink, the sink a weird underwater pale green marble, which struck him even as a child as both rare and out of place. When he looks up into the mirror, he looks older than he was expecting.

Jackson is not still in bed, as he had been expecting, but standing by Miller’s desk, looking at an old photo that’s still hung up on the wall. “Is this your family?” he asks, when he hears the door open. He glances over just for a half-second, so quickly Miller almost misses it.

“My grandparents,” he says, and throws his robe over the back of his chair.

“It’s sweet.” Jackson reaches out a hand, as if he were about to touch the frame. Then drops it, surprised at his own gesture. “That you have a picture of them.”

Somehow it seems like too much effort to explain that he didn’t put it up, that this room used to be his grandmother’s study, that all he did was succumb to inertia and never take it down.


	35. Jasper/Maya: Frog Sounds Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 11, 2017.
> 
> Next Part: Chapter 36.

Monty has fallen asleep in the back seat. He’s slumped to the side, neck and shoulders twisted, and his head is resting awkwardly on Raven’s shoulder. She might have her hand on his leg. It’s hard to tell from the front seat, in the dark, and Maya doesn’t want to turn around. To be a rubbernecker. To gawk.

She wants to stare out the windshield at the way the high beams splash light across the asphalt and the double yellow lines in the middle of the road. She wants to watch the edges of the forest rushing up to them and then falling away. She wants to put her hand on Jasper’s leg. But maybe they don’t have the sort of relationship, yet, where that’s a thing that she’s allowed to do.

He has his window rolled halfway down and the soft summer night dirt smell wafts in, along with the heartbeat hum of crickets, the croaking of frogs. They sound so close she’s sure they’re just at the side of the road and if she just had the right set of eyes she could see them. Yet all she can picture are hidden deep pools, off beneath the leaves, vast ponds of frog communities, ripples of water to mark where they leap.

If they were alone, she might decide to put her hand on Jasper’s knee.

It’s not far now and among the others, she can discern an aura of calm, of quiet expectation. Of approaching arrival and familiarity with frog song. Jasper touches his fingertips briefly to his lips and for a moment, Maya is sure he will say something, but he doesn’t, but she thinks she hears him sigh instead, under his breath. She’s had the feeling since they first met that in another life there was something tragic and broken about him, if other lives are a concept that exists, but maybe that’s just the accident, the broken bits of this life, poking through. He used to be different, Monty tells her. A little different. He used to be, not nervous, but always thinking just a half-minute too long, jumping up and down in place on the edge of a precipice. Just a kid, really, trying his best, ready, longing.

Monty never would have said those things if he hadn’t been a little bit high and very tired and they hadn’t been up on the top floor of the dorm tower looking out across the first bleeding sunset lights over the quad–because she was the new girl still, then. Maybe he didn’t trust her. Maybe she didn’t expect him to, yet.

She’s never told Jasper about that conversation because she needs some secrets. He can’t be the boy she tells everything to.


	36. Jasper/Maya: Frog Sounds Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 15, 2017.
> 
> Previous Part: Chapter 35.  
> Next Part: Chapter 49.

Inviting Maya to come with them was a risk, maybe, yes, but Jasper’s tired of never daring to approach any precipice, tired of living close and still inside himself, unable to breathe. At first, the ride was raucous and they talked and told jokes and laughed, Maya sometimes joining in–it felt all right, like it was working–but eventually, after dinner and the downing of the sun, the mood evened out to something quiet and thoughtful, four people increasingly inward looking, and the road trailing out beyond towns and people into trees and dirt and leaves.

Through the open window: frog calls. Deep croaking and trills, cricket rhythms, marsh sounds, lake music. He knows the bug sounds of summer well enough but only this road after dark sounds just like this, secret amphibian languages suffusing the air. The first time he drove it, he was eighteen and just out of high school and that wasn’t very long ago, but it was before the crack and fissure that separates old life from new. Already each curve and incline and dip feels like a ritual recalled.

The back seat is so quiet, he’s half sure Raven and Monty are asleep. Maya’s still awake though, next to him, watching out the windshield like she’s memorizing the silver and gray of the thin New England trees that shelter them. The woods close and creeping; the night sounds calling.

He hasn’t told her much about before he met her, because he’s not ready to stain this new relationship they’re weaving with all of his faults, cover it with all his broken bits. This means that there’s a lot unsaid between them. But sometimes what he most wants to say is with _you I feel safe_ , which is something he can’t explain but wraps himself up in anyway, assurance he doesn’t care yet to second guess. For a handful of seconds one day at the beginning of spring, standing outside a long-limbed curtain of leaves, that tree out by the language building at the far end of the lawn, he’d thought for a moment he might kiss her, or she might kiss him, and remembering that moment of breath-held anticipation makes him touch his fingertips light against his lips. He needs to check that he’s still a real person, that his physical body hasn’t disintegrated with lost opportunities and time.


	37. Jasper/Monty: Flu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 25, 2017.
> 
> Written for anonymous.

Craggy gray mountain peaks in his throat and every time he tries to stand, the world fishbowls: a strange and unaccountable film descends between him and the space in front of him, a layer of unreality that utterly distorts.

“So don’t try to stand,” Monty says, and pushes gently at his shoulders.

That is all it takes. Jasper topples back down to his bed.

 _It’s really not that bad_ , he tries to say. And: _I’m fine_. But what comes out instead is “Monty, it’s hot in here,” and that other film, the layer of annoyance covering Monty’s face, falls away, and he just looks sorry, and sad.

“Actually, I think it’s just you,” he corrects, and shoves and pokes at Jasper’s limbs until he’s lying down again. He sounds disappointed. Like he wishes it were the ship itself and he could hack right into the climate controls and make the whole thing right-side-up again, turn down the boiling overflow of lava heat in the air and bring in the sort of deep blowing wind that probably whirls around those mountains, or would, if they weren’t crowded in around Jasper’s tonsils, poking their way down his throat even as he tries to speak.

“It’s nothing, though,” Jasper reminds him. “I’ll be fine.”

He can’t really be sure he’ll be fine. People get sick all the time, spread their germs around, mutate horrific strains of disease that start as small itching coughs in the throat and turn into feverish sweats and impossible breaths and then somehow all of one’s organs just shut down–

It’s just that so many people in such a contained space inevitably–

It’s just–

“Jasper, stop.” One of Monty’s hands is on his forehead and the other is on top of his hand.

“Stop what?”

“Stop trying to form sentences.” He forces a smile. He’s leaning in too close, which is probably dangerous. But Jasper doesn’t have the heart to tell him. “It’s not going to work.”

“No. Probably not.”

After a while, Monty shifts and rearranges himself, sits down cross-legged on the floor by Jasper’s bed, still holding his hand. “Do you think you should go to medical?” he asks.

Jasper shrugs. “Tomorrow. If I’m not better.” The truth is that last night he barely slept, pricked awake by vivid dreams of distant planets mixed all up with the past, and that was the worst of it. Too hot, too cold, a stuffed head of cotton, or swamp grass, or dirt, and a throat ragged and raw like it had been burned. Already he feels that if he could just sleep, he’d be okay.

“Your dad agree to that?” Monty’s asking. The words slip through to his ears in a meandering, circuitous way. Sliding down steps, slinking their way down hill to him.

And Jasper shrugs again. It’s not that his dad doesn’t worry, because he does. Obviously he does. But no one wants to admit that a cold is the flu or that a flu could be a bad flu or that a bad flu could kill you and besides–“Medical’s just a hotbed of disease. I’ll catch four more things if I go.”

“Things?” Monty repeats. Like– _you’re not being very eloquent_. But he squeezes Jasper’s hand and Jasper squeezes back hard, as hard as he can, and mumbles:

“You know what I mean. Just–stay a little bit, okay?”

Monty shuffles closer and lets his head rest against the mattress, next to Jasper’s arm, in the tiny bit of space that’s free. And he promises, quiet and serious, “As long as you want.”


	38. Jasper/Monty: Spa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 26, 2017.
> 
> Requested by anonymous.

Between the two of them, they almost always know the answer to the trivia question of the day. It’s dialing in fast enough that trips them up. So it’s become something of a tradition, to take turns grabbing for a phone, to be not quite the right number caller, to spend a few minutes afterward decrying their bad luck or blaming each other with put-upon rancor for not punching in the numbers at just the right speed. They don’t even pay attention to the day’s prize anymore. It’s usually tickets to a local concert or a free dinner at a local restaurant, nothing exciting. So the day they finally win—the day they hear their voices on the radio and then that _congratulations, you are correct_ —they’re so distracted with jumping up and down and hugging each other that it’s quite a long time before they even hear _what_ it is they’ve actually won.

It turns out to be a day at a spa.

“A spa?” Jasper repeats. He’s already hung up, but he’s staring at his phone like the voice on the other end could still answer. His nose is wrinkled in confusion. “Monty, have you ever been to a spa?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

But it’s free and hey, they earned it, so they shrug, and show up the next weekend with their gift certificate and no idea what to expect.

Staring at the giant potted plants and the upscale-hotel-fluffy white robes, Monty finds himself wondering if perhaps they’re in over their heads, in some way. The countertops are just too shiny. And the windows are too big. He rubs the oversized silky leaf of one of the plants between his fingertips. Jasper sifts his fingers through a collection of rocks inexplicably placed in a jar.

“I think this might be the silliest thing we’ve ever done,” he says, which—taking into account high school especially, a particularly ridiculous time—is really a strong statement indeed.

Half an hour later, Monty finds reason to disagree. “ _This_ ,” he says, as he leans back in a strange white lounge chair and wiggles his bare toes, “is the silliest thing we’ve ever done.” He has some weird green goo on his face and though there aren’t any mirrors around, Jasper’s lying back next to him, so he has a pretty good idea just what level of _silly_ he’s reached.

It doesn’t feel bad, though.

Just, like, incredibly bizarre.

Jasper pokes at his cheek experimentally, then quickly draws his hand away. “Yeah,” he agrees. “New records keep on getting set and broken.” He plays absently with the tie on his toothpaste-white robe. Monty’s not sure if he’s fidgeting because he’s uncomfortable, nervous, or just awkward, or if he even notices he’s doing it.

“I kinda…don’t hate it though,” Jasper admits, after a long silence filled only with the distant, light waterfall-sound from the fountain in the corner of the room. “It’s pretty relaxing.”

Monty nods. “It is,” he agrees. Then: “I just thought it would be funny.”

“Me too.”

But actually the soft light of the room and smell of the plants (this place has a lot of plants, which endears it to him) and the sound of the fountain, and of Jasper next to him, moving sometimes, sighing, making a comment now and then, and even the gentle pressure of the mask on his face and the sensation of air on his bare feet and ankles and also the weird thrill of being almost naked in a public place—all of it combines into one light, soothing, sensation, something he can’t quite describe. A feeling of deep-bone relaxation. Of calm and bliss.

“Hey Monty?”

He tilts his head, opens his eyes again carefully and catches Jasper’s eye.

“Yeah?”

“After this, do you want to go that juice bar? I want to drink something with mango in it.”

Somehow, this wasn’t quite what he was expecting, not the confession that should have filled this space, but he grins anyway, and nods. "Sure. Do you think they have anything with bananas?”


	39. Emori + Echo: Prejudices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 27, 2017.
> 
> Requested by anonymous.

There is no dishonor in loyalty and no evil in survival.

Yet.

Survival never meant her own life, not just her own life or even first her own life, but the survival of Azgeda. The strength of Azgeda. The rule of Azgeda above all others. To be ruthless, to be fearsome, to be sly, all was in service of survival and thus not evil and so, too, to reject all that was impure. Because to be impure was to be weak. Weakness in the blood undermines survival. A danger to the Nation as a whole, a gift to its enemies.

Yet.

Now that Azgeda is gone her loyalty means nothing, goes nowhere. And now that she survives, but Azgeda does not, survival has only a pale meaning. It often feels like being a ghost on the Earth.

Back on the ground now, sitting outside, waiting for the first snow, she shoves her bare hands between her knees for warmth and wishes for gloves. How did the Sky People breathe in their shallow airless ships? She used to wonder. Now she wonders: how did she ever breathe in the biting sharpness of this air? Was it once that her lungs themselves were carved of ice?

Emori does not wear gloves and she does not hide her hands. She lays them on her lap and pricks at the cuticles of her deformed fingers, like she’s bored, like she has no need for the sky above them, tense and taut with winter, to burst open at its seams at last.

What is more freakish, Echo asks herself, the gross extension of her oversized middle fingers, or the tiny stumps, like brittle tree branches, sticking out to either side?

What is more freakish, that great warriors should perish and this human weakness, this corruption of the blood, survive throughout it all, or that Echo herself could have devoted a whole life to survival and strength and still, from the Earth to the Sky and back and through the end of the world to the other side, still not know at all what _survival_ means?

“Have you ever been to Azgeda territory before?” she asks.

Emori slides her gaze to her. Eyes narrowed, tense. “I’ve been all over,” she says, finally. “And this isn’t Azgeda territory anymore.” She tilts her head back, but the sky is black and too clouded for stars and still the snow doesn’t come. “It’s not _yours_ , anymore.”

As if that was what Echo meant. As if she’d been trying to claim—but for who? Nia is dead. Roan, dead. The oldest friends of her childhood and her fellow captives from the Mountain, gone. But she offers no correction. She does not say, _these are the only words I’ve ever known for **here**_.

Emori turns her hands over palms, up, and flexes her fingers. Echo can’t stop staring, but it isn’t an insult, anymore. Just fascination. Curiosity. She’s building herself again from the ground up, sloughing off old hatreds, burying old loyalties.

What else is there to do?

Someday she’ll take Emori’s hand like John does, like it’s a special, sacred thing.

She shivers again and pulls her coat closer over her shoulders, and Emori smirks, almost laughing, and says, “Azgeda warrior can’t stand the cold. It really is a different world.” Like she’s mocking, but her voice is gentle, and at the end edges almost into _kind_. Echo would answer but she’s got nothing snapping to say and anyway, before she can, the final seam in the clouds comes undone and a soft shower of first-snow starts to sift down around them both.


	40. Jasper/Maya: Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 1, 2017.
> 
> Requested by anonymous.

Maya takes him to visit the Mount Weather library, which is quiet and still and crowded with shelf after shelf of old paperbound books. They are holding hands as they walk through the door.

Almost all the books on the Ark were digital. These smell of ink and paper and memory; their pages rustle like whispers; their spines crack with gentle warning when opened and the first time he hears it, he pulls his hands back, uncertain, which makes Maya laugh, gentle-soft and just under her breath.

“They’re sturdier than they look,” she says. He’s thinking that the same could be said about her, and the opposite, probably, about him.

“Here, there’s a specific one I want to show you,” she confesses. Thrum of nerves in her voice. She leads him to a long green couch, pea-colored and pale as if too long left beneath a long-gone sun, and he perches on the edge, watches her walk with slight footsteps between the stacks and wonders why she sounded so uncertain.

What she shows him is an atlas of the stars. 

A tome so large they have to hold it open across both their laps, their legs pressed together, their shoulders crowded together. At first he can’t remember to stop holding his breath. They are underground and Maya’s skin is cold from the cold of the earth and she’s laid out in front of him the vista of his childhood: charts of constellations, large watercolor planets, satellite photographs of pinprick stars in the impossible distance, suspended in an endlessness of black.

“Is this what it’s like?” she asks him. Her voice wavers, a melodic whisper, of a part with the rustle of thick old paper as he curls one of the pages up and flips it back. “In space?”

How can he begin to say? Laid out in front of them is a photograph of the Earth, seen from above. It covers their knees like a blanket. Vast cerulean oceans, patches of verdant green. He stares at it for a long time. He stares down at Maya’s fingers, tentative at the corner of the page. She’s probably nervous, wondering if she’s done the wrong thing.

“Yes,” he answers, finally, and traces the outline of the Earth with his finger. “It’s just like this. The best views were on Alpha Station, especially the starboard window bay and from there…” His words fade into a slow, hollow breath. The earth presses down on them from above. He’s never felt it before now, never felt buried, never felt trapped. Only safe, secure at last. Now he understands her longing as an echo of his longing: how he’d needed the ground like a part of him was missing, how she needs the sky like a part of her is missing.

She wraps her arm around his shoulders and rests her head on his shoulder.

“From there,” he says, “Earth looks just like this. So distant.”

She takes his hand and places their fingers on a spot of green in the middle of the North American coast. “This is us.”

“I know.” He smiles, a little. “I was pretty good at geography.”

This is us, on the Earth and underground.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because I want to know what it’s like. Being up in space. What can you see? Is it beautiful?”

He doesn’t want to tell her that sometimes it’s like prison, because he’s never told her about lock up, and he’s not sure what sly confessions will worm their way forward if he gives them the chance. But also because this is the closest she will ever come to the vastness of space and he has started to understand now, how much she must want to rise and rise until the planet itself is no more than a marble, lovely and perfect and shining below.

“It’s very beautiful,” he answers. “Beautiful like you wouldn’t believe.”


	41. Miller/Bryan: Eternal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 2, 2017.
> 
> Requested by anonymous.

Yes, some people fall in love at sixteen and never fall out. Some childhood sweethearts become adult lovers. But Miller never thought he’d be one of those

He never thought he’d kiss a boy from Farm Station and still be thinking of him a week later, a month later, a year. Holding his hand under the table in the cafeteria, catching his eye during class, sneaking him into Alpha Station after curfew, up late at night with fantasies of him, night after night. Not just a little-kid-crush but something fierce and true burning in him. A flame not extinguished by prison station walls nor thrown out of place by a rocky journey to the ground.

Later, he admits, a shameful secret, late at night with his arms around him, feeling the warmth of him miraculous at last: “There were times I didn’t believe.”

Bryan kisses his knuckles. The gesture is not sweet but feels instead like he is trying to brand him or devour him, like he is only barely holding back the sting of teeth. “I know. I thought you were probably dead.”

They’ve talked about their time apart but not drawn out all the details, only the easy ones. The battles, the life-and-death moments, the almost-defeats. The exciting adventure stories. Some of the sadness and the regret.

They have never asked each other: _Was there anyone else?_

To Miller, it doesn’t matter. They’ve made it home and the only past that counts is the one they led together, once, two kids on the Ark high on first love, sneaking kisses in corridors, laughing under their breaths at inside jokes.

That first love has fallen away now, and what has taken its place is harder, tougher, beaten into shape by the elements. Defined by their separation and tested by time.

“But we survived,” he can say now. Time to take off that armor, the hard defensiveness of rational thoughts. Time to slough away those thoughts he once repeated like a mantra: _We will never hear from Farm. Farm is gone. Farm has survivors but he will not be one. I will never see him again. He will not be the same._

Taking off clothes is easier. Exposing the soft skin of his stomach or the hollow in the middle of his ribcage is easier. He welcomes old vulnerabilities. He welcomes the chance to forget that Bryan _isn’t_ the same, at all, and neither is he.

It’s no surprise, in the end, just a hollow hurt like a part of him has been carefully cut away, when Bryan leaves him. He packs up his things and they do not fight. They barely say goodbye. And for a while, a long time, Miller’s sure that that’s the end. Because he was never the sort who’d fall in love at sixteen, and watch that love actually last.

When Bryan returns to him, the second time—or is he the one who has returned?—it is no surprise either, if for no other reason than he no longer has the capacity for shock. His last bit of astonishment is wrung from him when he watches the sun rise over a new Earth, and that is all. He has seen it all. He pulls Bryan’s hands between his hands and kisses his knuckles, barely restrains himself from biting Bryan’s knuckles. He has been wrung out, wrung dry. He has left to him now only hard-headed desire and stubborn eternal need, heels dug in the ground, fingers gripping tight to fingers, desperation clawing at his throat. What can he say, what can he say? _I love you_ seems too little, _forever_ not enough, _be mine_ a falsehood, _let me be yours_ too much a plea.

He settles on “Be with me” and Bryan grabs him hard by the back of the neck (the sunrise flaring around them, the light red like warning) and breathes, “Yes.”


	42. Jasper/Monty: Agony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 3, 2017.

“I’m not going to bed,” Jasper says, and holds out one hand, palm out. “So don’t even try.”

If it weren’t for the slight hiss at the beginning of _so_ and the way his shoulders slump at just that bedraggled angle, Monty almost wouldn’t even know that he was drunk. The empty mug next to him, his fingers lightly twined through the handle, is another clue. Also that this is a scene they’ve played out before, a pattern that has started to wear into their days like a well-trodden path through the dirt.

Monty kneels down on the floor and sighs. Jasper’s sitting with his back against the piano leg, letting his head loll, letting his legs stretch out ahead of him. He’s taken off his shoes. Monty doesn’t know why, or where they are.

“You can’t spend the whole night in the commons,” he argues. This is his script, familiar like a fairy tale, melodic like a lullaby.

“I be _lieve_ I have before,” Jasper answers. He looks down at the mug like he’s surprised he’s still holding it, and roughly shuttles it across the floor. Monty winces at the rattling sound it makes, the too-loud crash as it comes up against a steel table leg.

“You shouldn’t,” he tries again. “Let me help you to your room.”

Jasper shakes his head and Monty grabs him by the arms anyway and hauls him up. He stumbles around his own sockfeet. His arms flail and then find purchase, wrapping around Monty at the shoulders and waist, trying to drag him down. But Monty digs his heels in and waits, patient through the headache forming between his eyes, until Jasper has found his balance at last.

They walk like a two-headed monster through the halls.

Jasper insists they go to Monty’s room tonight, and when they get there, he sits on the edge of the bed while Monty turns the lights on and closes the door. Monty takes off his own shoes and then sits down in his desk chair, not sure if it’s Jasper who can’t stand his closeness, or if he himself is disgusted by proximity.

After a few minutes, Jasper curls up on his side, his back to the wall. “How do you stand it?” he murmurs. “How do you keep living every day?”

Monty has no idea how to answer because the only answer he has is, _how can I do anything else?_ It’s a question that just doesn’t make sense.

“I’d rather have a spear through my chest,” Jasper’s saying. He’s rubbing the heel of his hand into the spot between his ribs where the spear went through. “At least there was shock. It kept everything else back. This is like the moment after when the agony sets in. Just playing over and over.”

Monty doesn’t know what to say to that either. He’d like to kneel by the side of the bed and take Jasper’s hand in his but what would that do? What would that matter? It’s been over a month now and Jasper looks at him like it’s been only a few hours and now they’re in a time loop, Jasper dragging him into this time loop, where his head is always dizzy and his stomach always aches.

“It will get better,” he promises, hollow, and Jasper shakes his head and turns away.


	43. Miller/Jackson: Staying Over Pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 4, 2017.
> 
> Previous Part: [Chapter 34](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12257070/chapters/27853437).
> 
> Next Part: Chapter 68.

Miller just slips back into bed, props himself against the pillows, and shrugs. Maybe Jackson thinks he’s embarrassed, or that he doesn’t like being called sweet. Really he just feels lightheaded and loose-limbed and his head is full only of simple, wafting thoughts, as airy as cotton candy, and as insubstantial. How much he likes watching Jackson walk across the room. The shape of his arms, the muscles of his legs. How out of place he looks, and also how perfectly in place.

He makes a circuit past the dresser, toes at his t-shirt where he left it on the floor, but doesn’t pick it up, and finally perches on the edge of the bed again. They left the bedsheets rumpled and tangled, some crushed at the edge of the bed and the rest cascading over the far side and now, in the orange-yellow light of the desk lamp and the standing lamp in the corner, the incomplete circles pushing back the late-night shadows, the room feels even smaller than it is, warm and intimate and old. Jackson’s leg is pressed against Miller’s leg and he leans with his palm on the mattress on Miller’s far side, leans over him.

“I should really be going,” he says. But he doesn’t sound like he has any intention of going.

“Mmm,” Miller nods. “Yeah. Roommates.” He’s serious, incredibly serious, but a smile is edging up the corner of his mouth and he’s staring at Jackson’s lips like his only thought is I should kiss him. Because it is.

As Jackson leans in, Miller tilts his chin up with two fingers but it seems like an eternity before they actually kiss. Another eternity before they pull away. Slow, languid kisses like this, barely touching kisses, open-mouthed no-tongue kisses: he’s never told Jackson how much he likes them. Never had a reason to. But now he must know, a secret shared in the mixing of breath, revealed in the angles of their limbs and even in the timbre of quiet between them. A gentle slide into intimacy. It sends a wave of shivers pricking across his skin.


	44. Bellamy + Jasper: Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 7, 2017.

When they start building permanent houses in the new Arkadia, Jasper signs up to work on the crew. Real physical work. Long hours in the sun until his muscles ache, his hands hardening with callouses, sweat shining across his forehead and nose.

He always thought he’d be the sort to work with his mind. He always thought, he always thought. He’d be a chemist on the Ark or something.

Some days he still can’t trust his brain. And every day he needs to wake up to feel the sun and the wind and smell the grass and flowers, to know that all of this is real. That he’s made it through years of dark and dismal tunnel to the other side.

Mostly.

After a day of work he should collapse onto his bed (the same mattress he slept on in the bunker, a thin pallet bed that still smells of the underground) and sleep the dreamless deep sleep of the dead. But instead he sits outside in the grass with his ankles loosely crossed and his knees pulled up to his chest and tilts his head back and gazes at the stars. The night air is crisp and cool. The sky ink-black and the stars sharp and blazing. 

“You’re going to catch a cold,” a gruff voice behind him says, but he doesn’t startle. He tilts his head all the way back until his neck aches. From this angle, he can just about make out Bellamy, standing behind him, awkwardly tilted and upside-down in Jasper’s view. He’s holding out a Guard’s jacket for him.

“Thanks, Dad,” Jasper answers. It’s maybe a little mean, calling him that. Especially because that’s not really how he thinks of Bellamy at all.

Bellamy just grunts and settles the jacket over Jasper’s shoulders, then sits down next to him. He’s still dressed in his work clothes too, and he’s wearing an identical Guard jacket of his own. Except that he’s earned his, and Jasper’s is just on loan.

He pulls his arms through the sleeves and wraps it tight around himself. It’s a little too big, and far too heavy; he feels like he’s swimming in it, or buried underneath it. “Mmmm,” he hums, and hunches his shoulders upward, and wraps his arms around his knees.

“You did good work today,” Bellamy says. It’s obviously a remark just made to fill the silence but it’s a high compliment too. The currency of Bellamy’s life is hard work.

“I know. It feels weird to wear this thing.” He tugs at the edge of his sleeve. “Not sure I like it.”

“You ever think of joining?”

Jasper’s face contorts, and he looks at Bellamy, trying to discern his real meaning by the expression on his face. But it’s too neutral. “You’d even trust me with a gun?”

“Yes.” Bellamy, a font of forgiveness. “It’s been a long time, Jasper.”

It doesn’t feel like a long time, except in the sense that it feels like an endless time, and maybe this is something Bellamy would understand—or maybe it isn’t. “I wouldn’t want one anyway.” Even this is too hard to explain. So much life taken, and for so little. He won’t do it again. If someone came to attack them again he’d surrender with his hands up. But saying something like that would only worry them—Bellamy, Monty, the rest of them. “That’s your life.”

Bellamy makes a noise something like a grunt and scoff mixed together, and then, inexplicably, he reaches over and rubs briefly at the back of Jasper’s neck, a gesture not quite comradely, or brotherly, too tender for that, yet also too awkward and too distant to impart any more intimate affection. Before Jasper can even quite register it, he’s crossed his arms against his chest again. “I don’t have much choice in that,” he says.

To that, Jasper could say that they have come too far to still be binding their own hands with talk of obligation and hard-hearted duty and cold loyalty, but he doesn’t. He just lets it wash over him, this realization. The knowledge that Bellamy is stuck in his own tunnel, too.


	45. Raven + Monty: Engineers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 9, 2017.

Recruited into Engineering at fifteen—not bad. Of course it’s the mechanics who do all the actual work. The engineers are all ideas but half of them can’t barely connect two wires together and if one of their ideas falls apart, what do they do? They call a mechanic.

Raven taps her forefinger on the tabletop in punctuation. The kid sitting across from her (he did say he was fifteen, but she could easily have pegged him for younger) is staring at her like she’s lost a few screws herself. Or maybe he thinks she’s been drinking, even though it’s barely past noon and she’s at work. Obviously she’s fine. She just doesn’t like the new apprentices to get too much into their heads all at once, lest those heads blow up like balloons and float away.

How would that be for a space walk?

She’s about to say something defensive, or maybe even accusatory, something about that look on his face and the words right there obviously crowding on the tip of his tongue, but before she can, he says, “I’m from Farm. I know how to build things.” Which wasn’t what Raven was expecting, but okay. 

“I thought you _grew_ things on Farm,” she answers, shooting him a skeptical look.

“I mean I can work with my hands,” he says. It almost sounds dirty except that he’s so earnest and a little defensive, all that first day pride swelling up, and all the more so because he’s one of the youngest in the program. Raven’s always been one of the youngest herself, so she knows how it feels. It’s hard to keep up a breeze of free-floating confidence, even when you know you’ve earned your place, when everyone around you is so settled and certain.

“Anything I can design, I can build,” he’s saying. And ah, there it is: the clear-voiced self-conviction he was aiming for.

“Okay,” she challenges, “what about anything _I_ can design?”

He looks startled for a moment. Then he leans forward on his elbows, halfway across the cool steel surface, and looks right at her and says, “Anything,” and her own breath catches for a moment, and then she grins.

“You’re on.”

She doesn’t really know him yet, Monty Green, but already she feels something, like an electric surge at her fingertips, or a ghost chill up her spine: a sense of familiarity, as if she’s met him before, or will not be able to help meeting him again. He’s not an equal, not quite, but he is in some unnameable sense _like her_. Confident and sharp. Ambitious and unparalleled.

They make plans to host their unofficial contest in her quarters in a week but he doesn’t show. But by then she no longer expects him to. Hearings on the Ark are succinct and speedy: arrested Thursday, Sky Box by Monday—she considers visiting him, even before Finn’s arrest, and the start of her weekly prison station visits, but she never does. It would be too awkward.

She does not see him again until they’ve both returned home, to the ground.


	46. Miller/Bryan + Miller & Bellamy: Accidentally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 10, 2017.

Bellamy doesn’t understand the dire nature of the situation. This wasn’t an ‘oh I’m sorry I accidentally bumped into you thing’ or a 'hey I didn’t see you there’ mistake. This was a space of at least sixty seconds when he and that sophomore kid Bryan stood in the same hallway, each trying to get past the other, each moving in the wrong direction so they were always stepping toward each other instead of away, and there were apologies involved, and nervous laughter, and general awkwardness, and it just went on and on. And then in the end Bryan took him by the arms and looked right him right in the eye and moved him out of the way, and then patted him on the arm before he left.

Miller tells the story again and Bellamy just stares at him. He’s sitting on the hood of his car with his heels up on the front bumper, his arms crossed on top of his knees. He nods slowly, and flicks out his tongue to lick his lips. “Okay,” he answers, just as slow. “So you had an awkward moment.”

“With Bryan,” Miller repeats. Adds a significant look on at the end.

What he’s trying to get across is that it _wasn’t_ an ‘awkward moment.’ It was like walking down the street and then accidentally stepping into an open manhole, all the stability of the ground just suddenly _gone_ as you drop ten feet to the underground. Which is also what realizing he’s gay has been like, except it’s been happening in slow motion over the last two-ish years.

“Okay,” Bellamy says again. “You’re making too big a deal out of it, though. Unless the real story was there mistletoe over your head—”

“It’s September.”

“Or you actually tripped and fell into his arms. Or—did you trip and his lips broke your fall?”

Miller scowls at him, and paces out in front of the car and then back. The high school parking lot is still more than half full even though classes let out twenty minutes ago, and he kind of wants to kick every door he sees just to avoid having to find _words_. “Does your sister make you marathon romantic comedies with her or do you come up with this stuff on your own?”

Bellamy snorts. “O’s not the romantic comedy type. But that’s not the point. You’re obsessing about this because—”

“I know why I’m obsessing.” Because he has a big, stupid, dorky crush on a sophomore. A sophomore _boy_. Two years of playing around with this being-gay thing in his head still hasn’t quite accustomed him to the shift in worldview necessary to acknowledge that liking boys, like this, is something he does. How Bryan close to him, tangled up in that eternal embarrassing moment in the hallway, smiling when he finally pulled Miller aside—hell, how the feel of his hands strong and sturdy on Miller’s upper arms, just a passing touch that felt like such a _meaningful_ touch—how all of this makes him want to be close to Bryan again. Clos _er_.

It was the longest and the shortest sixty seconds of his life.

And it wasn’t even sixty seconds. It was more like fifteen, tops.

“You’re obsessing because he likes you,” Bellamy says.

Miller stops his pacing right in front of Bellamy’s car, looks up like he’s ready to argue: _you’ve got that backwards_. But Bellamy’s staring at him too closely. He knows exactly what he just said and he’s just waiting for Miller to admit that he’s right.

He plays those seconds over again in his head.

How Bryan smiled at him.

But it’s too early, too early to say.

“Maybe,” he concedes, only that much, and then forces them to change the subject.


	47. Bellamy/Kane: Guard Shifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 14, 2017

Before he was on the Council, Kane reminds him, before he was a part of the judicial team, he was a member of the Guard himself. He says this as if it were something they had in common. Former Guardsmen both, putting on the jacket again to serve their people. Except that Kane moved up and all the way out of the ranks, while Bellamy was kicked out of the Cadets in disgrace, so it really isn’t the same.

Not that it matters. Sometimes he feels like they didn’t just bring the Ark crashing down, they tore apart all of its history too, and formed a monster-imitation out of the scrap. No different from their crude observation deck or perimeter wall. The stations are gone. The Council. Even the Chancellorship is a weak institution, held up above the populace by only a thread.

Kane is practically Chancellor. He doesn’t wear the pin but if it could be split in two, he and Dr. Griffin probably would. He’s in her quarters all the time anyway, or most of the time, part military adviser, part co-leader. Part something else, probably, if Bellamy knows how to read his own ghosts like he thinks he does. And he’s not jealous. And it doesn’t really matter; he doesn’t care.

He also doesn’t care that for two weeks now, he and Kane have been partners on the sunset-to-pre-dawn shift. It’s just not something he reads into very much. Because it’s not a very popular shift. When the sun goes down and their people slip inside and slip into sleep, what’s left in the camp are shadows hulking in unexpected places and the prospect of danger, subtle, seeping in beneath the collar, whistling like wind. Enough to make lesser men’s bones shake. But for Bellamy, it’s better than nights in his Alpha-Station bed, restless, ill at ease, thinking—

And for Kane, perhaps something similar.

Bellamy doesn’t know what haunts him but only that something does, because of the way his hands always hesitate right before he touches Bellamy’s arm or his wrist, right before he grabs him by the back of the neck.

Maybe it’s just Dr. Griffin. Maybe it’s the expectations that follow them, or the almosts. Bellamy understands that too. How something you can’t name can swallow you, then spit you out again, dizzy and worn.

They walk the perimeter slowly, watching for unusual movement. Sometimes Kane tries to make conversation and sometimes Bellamy answers him, when he knows what to say. And he tears apart his mind into separate parts, each part by itself and uncontaminated by the others: one to focus on the uncertainty of night sounds and the steady pace of their feet; one to keep the past at bay; one to bring forth wobbling, uncertain flashes of the future, when the start of dawn turns the sky steel-gray and they hand off their duties to another pair of Guards and they go home. If he wants, he can gesture for Kane to follow him.

There’s no question that he will.


	48. Jasper/Monty: Panic Attack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 18, 2017.
> 
> Set during the 1x07 hurricane.

Outside the cave, the storm sounds echo with muted violence, the worst storm they’ve seen in their short time on Earth and more terrifying, more complete, and more destructive than anything Monty has ever been able to imagine. Inside the cave Jasper is starting to lose it.

He’s pressed up against the wall and his fingers are trembling so hard it looks like he’s shaking them, and as Monty watches he puts one hand over his heart and presses hard; he takes a deep breath but seems not even to feel it, because the breath is fast like the gulping desperation of someone who’s almost been strangled, finally free.

Monty’s seen Jasper freak out before. He’s seen him jump a foot off the ground when startled, seen him work himself up to nervous wreck state over stupid things like tests or girls—he’s always had this in him. Now he has nightmares too, which wake him sometimes shaking and disoriented, and he’s become prone to macabre thoughts and sharp-edged pessimism. But this is different. This is something new, and at first, just trying to think over the lashing of rain outside the cave entrance, trying to see through the shadows and the dim, Monty doesn’t have any idea what to do. 

Jasper’s breathing becomes more ragged, and he curls in around his stomach, still standing but his knees bent, and the heel of his hand still digging in against his heart. “Monty,” he says, so quiet at first and just as jagged as his breathing that at first Monty doesn’t even hear him. Only the second time: “Monty, I think I’m having a heart attack. I’m dying.”

“You’re not having a heart attack.” He says it as if this were a ridiculous thought, but it gets his feet moving, rushing even, until he’s by Jasper’s side. He tries to touch his shoulder. Jasper just shakes him off.

“Yeah, I am. I am, something’s wrong with my chest.”

“You’re fifteen. It’s not a heart attack.” Impossible, ridiculous. But his own palms are sweating and he has to swallow down a hard ball of fear lodged in his throat. Jasper’s right about something being wrong, though. He knows that.

“Then what IS it? _Fuck_ , what is it?” He sounds near tears, slowly sliding down to the ground, still breathing like a drowning man just broken through the water’s surface. Or how Monty imagines that might be.

“I don’t know—how—” He crouches down too, wrings one hand hard with the other, cracks his knuckles. The sound makes Jasper jump.

“What was THAT?”

“Just me—nothing—listen to me, how long have you felt like this?” He reaches out for Jasper’s shoulder again, half-sure he’s only comforting himself. Jasper doesn’t push him away, this time.

“Little bit. Not this bad but—the storm—”

“Is it scaring you? It’s just weather, Jas—”

“Fuck that, I know,” he snaps, and for a moment Monty takes his hand away, startled. “I’m not scared of _rain_ , just…we were out there, and everything looked…all the shadows…”

 _Like Grounders._ No need to say it. Monty tries to tell him: no need to say it. He understands now, what has wound Jasper up and set him loose on himself, what has triggered this rush of anxiety and fear.

“Hey, hey, there’s no one but us here, okay? And no one’s coming through that storm to get us—”

At the phrase _get us_ Jasper tenses next to him, curls himself up further and starts to rock. Monty’s not afraid of Grounders or rain or wind or almost anything, but seeing Jasper like this makes a weird irrational fear craw up his own spine ( ** _is_** _it a heart attack? that’s not what heart attacks are like but—but—_ ).

“Just, um…” He scrambles, Jasper hides his face in his hands, and outside a particularly brazen gust of wind sends a tree limb falling. It makes them both jump, and even Monty’s heart skips a beat. “Just—breathe. I guess. With me, okay, slow—you’re not helping yourself breathing like that—”

“Can’t help it, Monty—”

“Then with me.” He scrambles in the darkness, reaches finally for Jasper’s hand and squeezes it hard, as hard as he can until he feels Jasper squeezing back. “On three, okay? With me.”


	49. Raven: Frog Sounds Pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 21, 2017
> 
> Previous Parts: Chapters 35 and 36.

Monty has fallen asleep with his head on her shoulder. When he wakes up, he will probably be embarrassed. He’ll pretend this never happened.

Raven’s used to that. She does a lot of pretending too.

But right now she’s calm: Jasper has the windows rolled down so she can hear a steady rhythm of forest night sounds and feel the closeness of trees and asphalt and dirt, as she watches tree trunks like sentinels passing them by, tree branches like ghost fingers reaching out for them as they drive. The night is so noisy, and so quiet, all at once.

When she glances at her watch, the electric-green numbers blare at her: 9:45. Almost there. They left later than Monty wanted to, because Jasper had to be the one driving and he prefers this, how they roll on steady through the darkness, alone on the winding road. Steady, steady.

Almost there.

Almost there except that time is not really moving like the bright digital numbers say it is. They are just an intrusion, and they lie. The road goes on forever, pulls them up, dips them back down, and a long frog-trill sounds and she feels it inside her and she closes her eyes. Maybe she will fall asleep too. Maybe when she wakes she will let Monty sit up first, and pretend she was asleep the whole time, and she never noticed his weight slumped against her side. She stopped by his room two days ago, right after her last final; Jasper wasn’t around and he was already packing, and their room was turned halfway upside down with notes and books and late semester trash. The window was open. The air smelled crisp and light and blue. Not like this. Not like this, traveling into the heart of the woods, escaping, or returning, or coming alive, she isn’t sure. And he’d told her that Jasper was with Maya, as if Raven had come by to see him, when really she was just making the rounds. She leaned in the doorway with all her weight on her good leg and she asked if he was looking forward to the trip, and for a moment, he looked distracted, like he didn’t know what she meant. Then he finished zipping up his suitcase. Said it didn’t feel real.

She said that nothing feels real when your brain’s all knotted up still from exams, but she knew what he meant.

It’s a different world out in the woods.

He moves a little in his sleep, deep in a dream, and she wonders if she should take his hand.


	50. Jasper/Maya: Pill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written October 26, 2017.
> 
> Next Part: Chapter 62.

The kids at Highpoint Prep wear too many pastels, collared shirts, and khakis to be taken seriously but still, damn, they know how to throw a party. The theme is roughly Alice in Wonderland so the candy-colored thing actually works; all the decorations are roughly psychedelic with a strange innocent vibe and in the downstairs living room twirling lights throw patterns over the people dancing, leaning, talking, kissing, and lend a disorienting vibe.

It’s weird, overall, but the weirdest thing is that their drug of choice in this part of town are pills. A whole dish of them sitting there innocuous next to a potted plant. Jasper peers in, then grabs a small handful and lets them slide out between his fingers, smooth and cool, like tiny pharmaceutical stones.

“If this were _really_ an Alice-themed party, they’d have something to smoke,” Monty notes.

Jasper holds up a small red capsule. “Maybe this one will fuck you up so much you’ll _think_ you’re a giant caterpillar smoking a hookah.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds just as fun.” 

They could leave, but it’s not every day two kids from Arkadia High get invites to a party like this. This might be a once in a lifetime thing.

Before they head off in different directions, Monty to get a feel for the rest of the living room and Jasper to examine the kitchen, he pockets one of the pills. Just in case.

The kitchen is brighter, quieter, with fewer people but more crowded: everyone running into everyone else, into the corners of the furniture. It’s where he sees her for the first time. She’s pouring a drink of water from the door of the fridge. And when she looks up and sees him watching her, she smiles.

They end up sitting on the windowsill halfway up the curve of the stairs, because it’s the most private not-too-private place they can find, and because they can hear the edges of the party, the ambient noise of it drifting up and around them, while still hearing each other speak, too. Her name is Maya, and no, she doesn’t come to these sorts of things often. “I’m just really good friends with Lee,” she explains.

Jasper has no idea who Lee is, but he’s guessing they’re in his house.

“You’re not from here, are you?” she asks. “Let me guess…Riverside?”

He grins. “Arkadia. Close.”

She tilts her head, not quite embarrassed at the mistake—Riverside’s another private school, kind of hippie and weird, nothing like the giant public-school melting pot of Arkadia High. The light from the full moon outside falls perfectly against the side of her face, makes her look like a piece of art come to life. “Well I knew you weren’t Highpoint. It’s a small school, everyone knows everyone else. What’s Arkadia like?”

Big and noisy and crowded, easy to get lost in, but he tries to find some way to explain it that makes it sound riotous and bright and perfect, as much a dream as the spinning lights on the downstairs walls. Somehow he just wants to impress her.

Later, he asks her if people really just do handfuls of pills at these things. She tells him it’s almost that bad, yeah, but she’s not into it. He does not ask her what she is into, because he’s not sure how that would sound.

Instead, he takes out the little red pill he took from the living room and holds it out to her in the palm of his hand. “Any idea what this does?”

She stares at it a long moment. Carefully picks it up, her fingertips lightly brushing against his skin. Whatever the pill does, he already knows it couldn’t turn him inside out like the simplest of her touches does.

“No idea,” she says, finally.

Jasper looks up.

Maya is looking at him, watching him, he realizes too late and has no idea for how long, her eyes bright and daring and he thinks, **_oh_** _—she’d take it if I asked her to_. Something about this moment is breath-catching for her too.

He takes the pill from between her fingers, flicks it out over the banister, and kisses her.


	51. Bellamy/Raven: Continental

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 5, 2017.

This hotel serves a continental breakfast. Raven’s not even precisely sure what that is, but she likes the sound of it, just like she likes the crispness of the sheets on the queen-size bed and the glass wall closing in the shower and the little white hotel soaps. This place is nicer than any hotel she’s ever stayed in before. It’s nicer than any of her old _apartments_.

It’s a step above the kinds of places Bellamy is used to, too, but he’s not taking it as well. He looks mostly uncomfortable at the prospect, grumbling as he inspects the room service menu or peers into the mini-bar.

“Blake,” she says, grabbing both of his arms and pulling him to look at her. He is not cooperative, and his body swings around like dead weight as she bobs her head, searching out his gaze. “Loosen up. We’re not even paying for this place and it is _awe_ -some.”

He grunts, and takes a too-deep breath, like his brain is short-circuiting with too many arguments and complaints. Finally he settles on, “It's—we don’t even _need_ a mini-bar,” and Raven has to laugh.

She doesn’t take her gaze from him, but reaches out blind for the room service menu he left on the table. “But we do need,” she answers, flapping it open with one hand and shoving it too close to his face, “breakfast in bed.”

“That’s not what the word _need_ means.”

“Don’t be a killjoy.” She throws the menu aside again, and shuffles him backward until his knees hit the bed, then topples him over. And at least he lets himself be toppled, which is a good sign. She climbs on top of him, and straddles his hips.

Bellamy sighs, but it is a sound of resignation, and she watches the stubborn displeasure fall from his face and his feature rearrange themselves, slowly, into something closer to appreciation. He crosses his arms behind his head. “I guess it does have a pretty good view,” he admits.

It does: from their window they can see a panorama of the city unfolding. But that’s not where he’s looking.

Raven grins. “Babe,” she announces, with a  wicked flicker of her eyebrows up, “this is just the start. Welcome to the best weekend of your life.”


	52. Monty: Frog Sounds Pt. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 7, 2017.
> 
> Previous Parts: Chapters 35, 36, and 49.

Dreaming, he is in the forest. Surrounded by an odd glow, low to the ground, suffusing the treescape like the downing of a distant UFO and he’s looking for something (later, awake, trying to recall, he won’t be able to touch even the tip of his tongue to _what_ ), searching fruitlessly for something in the middle of the forest, traveling over the uneven landscape of the forest, searching.

Jasper is there sometimes. Saying things like “Almost there, Monty” or grabbing his hand.

The forest is deep and darker the further he goes and later he ends up by a very large pond, almost as large as an ocean. Or maybe he is at the ocean. Impossible distance after impossible distance and always the sense that something is missing. An edge of frustration, a longing.

He sits down at a table with a group of people he does not know, not even in the dream, and they distract him with stories and drinking and food. The forest seems very distant. The ground seems to move under his feet.

Something jars him. The dream is disrupted. 

For a second, he is awake. He feels bleary. His limbs are in the wrong places, and his muscles ache and his neck aches and he feels a cool breeze blowing, whistling, and he’s not sure where he is. His dream had to do with a forest. He’s sitting next to Raven and his left arm is crushed against her side, his left hand against the side of her leg. In front of him the outline of the driver’s seat.

Now he remembers. He closes his eyes again and tries to replay the dream. A great woods. Or maybe he’s imagining–because they are in the woods now, that is real. A searching. Jasper. He dreams about Jasper a lot, the rest, he can’t remember, can’t pin down. He trails after it, stumbling from one image to the next, awkward and limping and with every step forward the memories fall further back into the mossy green, until he decides at last not to bother. 

They must be almost there by now.

Maybe he can fall asleep again. Lulled to sleep by the night music and the wild amphibian trills.


	53. Bellamy/Clarke: This Is What It Would Be Like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 13, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt "We were pretending to be lovers but I’m not pretending anymore and I have to know if you feel the same way."

This is how it would be, being married to Clarke.

Standing just inside the doorway of their bedroom, watching her as she sits on the edge of their bed, combing her hair. Her movements are so careful and so deliberate and so calm, she all but hypnotizes him, and he wonders what she’s thinking. Her gaze seems far away and her hands seem to move all on their own.

No one else is allowed to see her like this, this soft evening version of her. Not even Bellamy should have this moment, truly, but he does not feel like an intruder or even a spy, but almost like—

“They really do like the finer things,” Clarke says, without looking at him. She does glance, though, at the beautifully wrought comb in her hand. “I can’t remember the last time I took all the knots out of my hair.” 

Her voice is as soft as the moment feels, and Bellamy can only hum. She sounds pensive. He feels lost, too, like it’s hard even to anchor himself as she stands up, walks over to the table by the window, and sets the comb back in its place. It’s just one of a set of toiletry and beauty items of a sort Bellamy has never seen on Earth. But then he’s never met a people like the Shallow Valley clan either.

A strange and lilting people who immediately disoriented him, who shook him so off balance—and Clarke, perhaps, too-that he did not know how to correct their error when the clan leader assumed he and Clarke were husband and wife. But perhaps it was better that way. Marriage is of such importance, and the unit of a married couple so central, to their society, that they were more willing to listen to Skaikru’s positions when they perceived the new group’s leaders as a married couple. The uncorrected mistake is surely a part of why the day’s discussions went so well.

“You look beautiful,” he tells Clarke, now. He means it as a comment on her hair, on the effort she’d put forth, but she looks up, startled, and he realizes too long a moment has passed between her offhand comment and his. Also that his words sounded breathless and significant. And that the room, bigger than either of their quarters in Arkadia, if dominated perhaps too overtly by the bed in its center, suddenly seems too small.

“Thanks,” Clarke answers, and smiles. She almost looks shy.

Bellamy walks a little closer, and shoves down all of the nerves he feels winding their way around his lungs like snakes. This is the first time all day he’s felt the least bit ill at ease. Not in his first meeting with the Shallow Valley leader, not in their negotiations, not even at the stiff and formal dinner they left just an hour ago did he feel even a bit of uncertainty. And not at any moment with Clarke, his wife Clarke, his pretend wife Clarke.

This is what it would be like to be married to her.

Side by side all day, and at night alone in the quiet of their room. She lets down her hair, he takes off his boots. There is no more pretending, no bluffing, no diplomatic lies, no bluster.

It’s almost real. Except for the half-truths he’s still telling himself, how hard he’s trying to convince himself that he had to _act_ the part of a husband, when it’s only in this moment that he feels like s a fake. Somehow he’s standing next to her, next to the table, and she’s watching him like she can read every wordless thought sketched across his face, watching him with her mouth slightly open as if there were a question of her own on the tip of her tongue.

“How… _right_ did today feel to you, Clarke?”

A flicker of a smile, a ghost of that old self she resurrects sometimes, and he feels a warm, safe feeling spilling out across his chest.

“How right did it feel negotiating next to my husband?” The smile grows wider around the last word and he wonders if she’s been playing it around in her own head, like he’s been playing around the word _wife_. “More right than I thought it would.”

He nods. He wants to take her by the hips and pull her close but settles for reaching for her hands.

“Not really like pretending,” he ventures.

He’s staring at her eyes, bright and blue. Her eyes staring back at him, barely blinking. Not daring but—dawning.

Clarke drops his hands, grabs him by the sides of the jacket he’s still wearing, and pulls him close. She looks all of a sudden on the verge of laughter. "Fake husband,” she murmurs, “take me to bed.”


	54. Bellamy/Clarke: Breathing Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 14, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt "I have you shoved against the wall but now I can’t stop looking at your mouth."

Even backed against the wall—literally, pressed against the dropship wall, half-hidden in the shadow, and Bellamy looming over her, his hands against the wall on either side of her head—Clarke stares at him with infuriating self-righteousness, won’t back down. There is a defiant narrowness to her gaze and she leans just the slightest bit forward as if, at any moment, she might shove him backwards and maybe right off his feet. As if she does not doubt for a moment her control.

How did they end up here?

Arguing about something stupid. Camp politics.

He kept on stepping forward and she kept on stepping back, a strategy in itself: a nonchalant act, a mirage of lightness, the argument too far beneath her, his words no more than ants beneath her heel. So he just kept walking and she kept on backing and then they hit against the wall.

And she tilts up her chin. 

“You don’t control the camp.” She enunciates each word with ice-chill condescension. “You can’t make all the rules. It doesn’t make sense for—”

He bends his elbows, slightly, carefully, a calibrated lessening of the distance between them, and takes another half-step into her space. He’s following every movement of her lips. The sound of her voice fades in, fades out: the argument seems so stupid, when they’re standing this close. They’ve blown it all up out of proportion and now it’s crumbling down around them again, crumbling down and blowing away in the same breeze that sends the cloth over the dropship door flowing in.

“I—” Clarke says, on a sharp intake of breath, and then stops.

Bellamy’s still looking at her mouth. She’s noticed, by now. But she doesn’t rebuke him, and he does not stop.

“You’re right,” he admits.

“What?”

“You’re right. We can talk about the shift schedules.”

Without the argument to set her spine stiff and straight and set the spark in her eyes, Clarke softens, her eyes widen and she bites her lip. But her chin is still up-tilted, her gaze still steady on him. A curious expression lighting across her face.

“I don’t care if you’re totally in charge of the tents—”

“Okay. Good.”

“Good.” She nods, small, perfunctory. “So are you going to give me some breathing room now?”

He flicks his gaze down to her lips again, a long, pointed, stare. Then back up.

“If you want.”

She shakes her head. Then, more than he’d expected, enough to startle him and take the breath from his own lungs, she presses her hands to his cheeks and draws him in. He almost loses his balance, drops his hands from the wall; they land on her waist.  

“Not at all,” Clarke whispers. She is so close he feels the words against his lips. So close that the last too-long moments before they are not kissing shade easily into the first moment that they are.


	55. Bellamy/Clarke: Underground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 16, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt “We slept in the same bed for space reasons but now we’re just waking up and there’s something about your bleary eyes and mussed hair.”

The first thing Clarke does when she wakes up is fumble for a match to light their lantern. Underground, and with no natural light, it’s impossible to know the hour or the time of day. But she feels well-rested, so she assumes it must be late morning by now.

Time to head out.

She turns, gently in the tiny space, to face Bellamy so she can wake him up, too. Then stops, her shoulder twisted underneath her, her lips parted with words (his name) unsaid. The flickering lantern light is playing off his forehead, hitting his cheekbone just so, and his hair, grown almost too long, curls around his ears and into his eyes in a messy, sleep-ruffled way. His eyes are still closed, his breathing steady. He looks peaceful and handsome and lovely all at once.

So she settles down against the pillows, carefully tucked up against herself to maintain the sliver of space between them, and just watches him.

The light is a living thing, turns his skin gold.

They’d had high hopes for this particular bunker but, after a hundred years of abandonment, maybe more, groundwater has started to seep in through the stone and almost everything has been destroyed. The air smells damp and scummy green. They managed to scavenge a few supplies amid the wreckage, enough to make their efforts not quite a total waste, but by the time they’d finished their exploring, it was too late to make the trek back home before dark. Which is how they ended up squashed together on a 21st century government-issue cot, the only one in the dorm not desecrated with mold, how they found themselves squeezing together under one thin blanket, tugging at their respective ends of the single flat pillow all night long.

Bellamy’s eyes flicker open, slow and bleary. He blinks a few times. Only slowly looks up and focuses on her. Clarke focuses her attention on his eyelashes and on the flecks of gold in his irises: little details she can only see because they are so close, all but nose to nose in their tiny bed.

He makes a low noise, a rumble like a clearing of the throat. Despite the effort, his voice is still sandpaper rough when he speaks: “Morning…?”

She bites the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. Why should the sleep-lines around his eyes and the warmth of his body at rest and the flex of his arm as he moves, shifts, to gain his just-woken bearings–why should any of this make her want to smile so?

“I think so,” she answers.

Bellamy stretches, awkward, half-turns onto his back and arches it, stretches his legs out beneath the blanket. He is like art. Moving art. She holds herself still and close and watches him. When he settles again, it’s on his side, like before, staring at her with that same soft morning-face that she does not recognize on him, does not know how to read.

Eventually, she thinks he must be taking the measure of her too. Cataloging her own tangled hair, the way her face looks, blurred with sleep and shadow and the slightest hint of lantern-glow. His expression is curious and fond. She is not surprised when he reaches out and tucks her hair behind her ear. It does not make her nervous, uncertain, or excited. But it does send a wave of warmth through her, despite the dank and chill of the underground room.

“Guess we should be going,” he says. But when she shifts a little closer, he opens his arm for her, and holds her close when she settles with her head against his chest.

“Guess we should,” she answers.

But not quite yet.


	56. Bellamy/Clarke: The Floodgates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 18, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt “Oh, my God, I thought you were going to die. Please don’t ever scare me like that again.”

When Bellamy wakes up, Clarke throws her arms around him, and buries her face in his neck.

She really wasn’t certain, for a while there, if he would ever open his eyes again. So the moment he first stirred, that first undeniable sign of life in him, opened a floodgate not even she knew was almost bursting, released a torrent of tension that had been building and building and building up in her for days.

First when half of his hunting party came home, but only half. She’d scanned their faces as they came in the gate. NotBellamy, NotBellamy, NotBellamy. Then the gate closing behind them. And she’d told herself: _he’s almost died a thousand times, and so have you. But you’re both still here._

It’s almost enough to make her believe they’re invincible.

Then, the passing of hours, as the rest of the party did not come, and the day waned, and then the next, and the others didn’t know where they were, and there was no communication with their radios. The hours and the days when the lie of invincibility became harder to tell. Harder to believe.

Finally, his return, badly injured and delirious, and another set of interminable days by his bedside, holding his hand, waiting. Telling herself _he’s made it too far, he’s invincible, he is_ , waiting.

So it is no surprise that she’s crying into his shoulder or grabbing too hard at the fabric of his shirt. Now that she knows he’s all right, he will live, it’s okay; now that he is truly safe again at last, she can allow herself to cry. She can let go the sobbing wreck she’s been inside for days.

At first, he just lies there beneath her too-strong grip, no sign of response from him at all (she doesn’t care, she’s not even thinking—he’s alive and she can hear his heart beating, that’s what matters)—then he wraps his arms around her, gentle and loose, and asks, his words almost incomprehensible, his voice rough with disuse, “Clarke? What happened? Are you okay?”

It’s enough to make her laugh, a wet, strangled sound. “You almost died,” she tells him. “And you’re asking if I'm—” A sound, half-sob, half-laugh, utterly beyond her control, chokes off her own words. But she pulls herself up, slowly, reluctantly, and looks at him. Watches his eyes, blinking, scanning over her face. She brushes a bit of hair out of their way and sniffs, and tries to smile.

Bellamy smiles back, soft and comforting. “So just another regular day?”

She could scream: she was so worried and he’s joking. But if he weren’t joking, she’d still be sobbing. She could kiss him, just out of pure joy at seeing the light in his eyes, the animation on his face.

The gentle, calm way he looks at her.

She could kiss him.

She does.

And Bellamy, startled for a moment, confused, reaches up and tangles his fingers in her hair and kisses her back.


	57. Bellamy/Clarke: The Closeness of His Body in the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 19, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt “We’re hiding from the authorities and it’s very close quarters in here, I can feel your body against mine. ”

“In here, in here, in here,” Bellamy whispers, harsh under his breath, as he grabs Clarke’s wrist and pulls her down a narrow side corridor and then through a door. She almost trips over her own feet taking the corner too fast. Fear and exertion have robbed her of the ability to breathe. But once the door has closed behind them, her lungs have no easier time drawing in air, because this space, a janitor’s closet stuffed with brooms and mops and dustpans, is barely big enough for one person and now they’re trying to squash in two.

For a few moments, in the utter gloom, she cannot see a thing. It does not help the painful beat of her pulse in her neck that she cannot tell what it is digging into her back or that she can still hear the footsteps of the Guard, out there on the other side of the door, or that Bellamy is standing so close she can feel his leg, his arm, his chest against hers, can feel the outtakes of his breath into her hair.

But she can’t complain. Because if she’d been by herself, she’d almost certainly be in cuffs by now. She doesn’t know Factory at all, and she’s never given two thoughts to where the janitorial staff keeps all of their supplies. 

She’d like to think her wits would have helped her out a bit, and maybe a big old dash of luck, but really—Bellamy is the reason she’s escaped, if it’s safe to say quite yet that they’ve escaped. He’s the reason the high rush of adrenaline through her is starting to subside, just as the clattering of Guard-boots against the floor outside is starting to fade into the distance.

Twenty seconds of silence, then thirty, and finally Bellamy’s gruff undertone: “I think they’re gone.”

“I think so, yeah.”

He’s so warm and so close. Her knees feel weak and she wants to grab him by the shoulders, wants to use his body as a crutch just to keep herself upright. She will not fall into the mops, she won’t.

“We should…probably wait a little longer, though,” he adds.

Clarke nods, forgetting at first that he probably can’t see the movement in the dark. “Agreed.”

She thinks of adding something, about how she doesn’t have any regrets, how she’d do it again and he wouldn’t even have to ask, but somehow it just doesn’t seem like the right time. Also she’s not sure, if she opened her mouth again, if she’d maybe start laughing, or sobbing, or both. It’s just an adrenaline crash, that’s all. Just a let down of emotion, just the absurdity of her situation: alone, chest to chest with a janitor from Factory, who she’s known for all of three days, for whom she’s risking getting floated, risking everything. It’s just the closeness of his body in the dark.

She hears a slight fumbling, a shifting of weight, then feels his hands on her hips. Only or a second, then they’re gone. Then his arm bracing itself on the shelf above her head. Which is almost worse, how she feels now like he’s boxing her in.

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Almost lost my balance.”

“S'okay.” Her voice sounds almost as rough as his. She can’t see his expression, but she can feel his eyes on her. “I didn’t mind.”

He makes a sound, low under his breath, self-satisfied and pleased, and she just knows he’s smirking. But it doesn’t turn her off. She listens to him shift his weight again, feels it in the subtle rearrangement of his body against hers, but still doesn’t expect the way he grabs her by the hips again. Harder this time, with purpose.

She grabs him by the shoulders.

They’re standing now, closer than they have to be, toe to toe and nose to nose. If she focuses carefully enough, she can make out some of the details of his face. His expression is less cocky than she’d been picturing. More desperate, rather, and wanting.

So she does not kiss him, or does not quite manage to, but launches herself forward until her mouth crashes against his and then her body crashes backward against the shelving. It lands with a great thump that makes her heart skip a beat again and lodge itself up in her throat. Oh no, oh _fuck_ —if someone _heard_ —

She is utterly still. Bellamy is utterly still. But they don’t let go and they don’t pull away, their lips all but touching and she can feel his breath on her skin as easily as she can feel his heart, racing.

But no one comes. And in the safety of the silence, she yanks him forward again, hips crushing against hips and her fingers scrambling at his shirt and his own hands taking the measure of her waist, large and steady on her hips, and his mouth on hers again, breathless and wanting. They barely keep themselves steady in the tiny, awkward space. But he doesn’t let go, and neither does she.


	58. Bellamy/Clarke: You First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written November 20, 2017.
> 
> For the prompt “Congratulations! One of your dreams has finally come true. Let me give you a big hug and wow, you’re warm.”

Bellamy sends her a text that is just her name, all caps—CLARKE—and does not answer any of her requests for clarification for a full ten minutes. Then he is knocking at her door. She meets him on the front porch, where he still won’t talk, not until he’s pulled a stack of papers from a tall, official-looking envelope and held them right up to her face.

She has never seen him this buoyant, this absolutely giddy. It’s not like him at all, but when she manages to take the papers from him and skim over the first page, she understands.

“Bellamy,” she breathes, and looks up at him, wide eyed and open-mouthed, too shocked even to be able to smile. “Bellamy, that's—”

“NYU,” he finishes. “A _scholarship_ , to NYU, Clarke—I can go. I can actually go.”

She throws the papers to the floor and flings herself at him, her arms around his neck and her face buried in the curve of his shoulder, and hugs him so tightly she doubts he can even breathe. His arms wrap around her too, holding her just as fiercely. 

He got the acceptance letter two weeks ago, and in that time she’s heard him psyche himself out of happiness dozens of times. Saying stuff like _I should be proud of myself just for getting in_. And _I’ll learn just as much somewhere less expensive, it’s fine_. Trying to convince himself he really meant it, that his great achievement wasn’t clouded over by disappointment, that his consolation prize, knowing he was good enough to be let in, at least, was all he needed.

But this. Bellamy all but bouncing his way up her front steps and grinning wide to show his teeth and practically buzzing with pure and unadultered joy. Oh, this. She feels his happiness right through her as if her skin were leeching it right up from his, feels his happiness because it’s her happiness too.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispers, and doesn’t let go. “I’m so happy for you, Bellamy.”

He squeezes her a little tighter.

Probably, one of them should step away, soon. But Clarke can’t bring herself to let go. Bellamy is warm and his shirt is soft beneath her fingertips. His body is solid and real and close. His arms are so strong, and she can feel him nuzzling against her neck.

And if she’s become that cliché, a girl with a crush on her best friend, at least she can admit it to herself, and pull every last perfect second from moments like this.

When Bellamy finally pulls away, a hesitation in his movements and expression to match the reluctance, the disappointment, that Clarke herself feels, he looks at her with a softened version of that radiant grin and says, with (she’s sure) an unintended softness, “I could kiss you.”

She laughs, but it comes out much too quiet. A feet-shuffling beat of awkwardness follows, as she looks down at the floorboards and their shoes. Then back up again, and—an absolute impulse, not letting herself think—meets his gaze, takes a breath, and grabs him by the front of his shirt. Kisses him. He’s surprised for just a second, then kisses back, hands gripping her hips this time and walking her back until they run right up against her front door.

“Not if I kiss you first,” she murmurs, as they part.

This time when Bellamy laughs, it’s genuine, breathless but genuine, like a great sigh of relief as he bends to rest his forehead on her shoulder, and wraps his arms around her once again.


	59. Monty + Maya: Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous. 
> 
> Written November 25, 2017.

Eighteen days after they return from Mount Weather, Monty runs into Maya standing by the scrap heap behind Alpha Station. She’s by herself, the first time Monty’s seen her alone since they first came through the gates. It’s strange not to see Jasper next to her. Even when they fight—and he’s heard them fighting through the wall of their quarters, terrible fights—they’re still with each other always. Compulsively so.

He’s not sure if he should just leave her be or not. But he stands there staring for so long that eventually she looks up and notices him, and then it’s too late, anyway.

She’s wearing an oversized jacket and boots that look a little too big, and she has her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Her skin, which has already lost the pale translucence of the underground, is wind-whipped now and red. Like Monty, she never developed a natural response to the changing of the seasons, the normal fluctuations of Earth temperatures, but unlike him she made her way to the ground on the edge of winter: no temperate fall training ground for her, only a straight plunge into the deep end of the elements. The hunching of her shoulders up toward her ears, the way she folds into herself for warmth, and the vastness of the background behind her, the gargantuan ship to her left and the tilting pile of metal debris to her right, all combine to make her seem very small. But she still tries to smile at his approach.

“Admiring our collection of metal garbage?” he asks.

“Mmmm.” She pokes at a stray bit of glass with her toe. “It's—more than I expected. When Jasper told me you were scavenging from your other station. I don’t know what I pictured.” She half-turns, looks behind her at Alpha Station, looming. “Your ships are so much bigger than I thought they’d be.”

Monty looks up too, tilts his head all the way back to take in the full height of the arch. The truth is that it used to impress him, too, when he was little. Farm Station was big but boxy and crowded. “This was the biggest one,” he answers.

“But it’s not where you or Jasper—”

“Farm and Tesla. We don’t know what happened to them.”

Maya makes a sound, small and considering, maybe commiserating. The type of sound Monty wouldn’t even have heard, if Camp Jaha weren’t so quiet at this hour of the day. For a while, after, only distant, vague sounds interrupt their silence: a clang, as of something being built or destroyed; a random shout from the other side of the ship.

“There’s not really much left though, is there?” Maya asks. Her voice is louder than he’d expected and Monty almost jumps at it. The longer he thinks about it, the less he’s sure he knows what she means.

They lost ten stations. Most of their people. His family, probably. But it feels selfish to say that when Maya’s the last of her people, and she’s standing there toeing at the pile of broken glass some fool thought that maybe, somehow, they might need.

“I mean what’s left is this ship and some supplies.”

“We might still find more in Mecha—”

“No, I mean—” She closes her eyes for a moment, huffs out a breath. This is more emotion than he’s seen from her in the last two and a half weeks, emotion more like what he can hear when she and Jasper raise their voices, except it’s all contained there in the exhale through her nose. “I mean there’s no past. There’s no—nothing to look at and say ‘this is how it used to be.’ Just survival and…garbage.”

“No art, you mean?” His voice sounds hard, even to his own ears, as if he were insulted that she called his home _garbage_ , even though he’s not. That’s what salvage trips are for, to search for useful treasure among debris. So far they’ve found a lot of debris.

She shakes her head and turns away, like he just doesn’t get it. Or maybe she’s about to cry and doesn’t want him to see.

The worst is that her art is still there, and all her old artifacts, and her history. Out there in the Mountain, waiting. Monty knows they talk about it, the chancellor, Kane, Bellamy: what to do with the Mountain and its wondrous treasure of supplies. No one’s dared to talk to her about it yet, though. No one’s asked her if she’d ever want to go back.

He’d like to reach out and comfort her in some way, but the wind picks up and his own hands are curled into fists, and he just doesn’t know what to do.


	60. Miller/Bryan: Lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written November 26, 2017.

What is the lesson he’s to take from this?

Bryan lying next to him again in his bed.

That good things come to those who wait? They only got to do this twice on the Ark: sleep next to each other in the same bed. And it was thrilling, then, a little forbidden, a little dangerous. A pushing of the boundaries, a dare. Hoping his dad wouldn’t come back early from the night shift. Counting out the hours until they’d have to get dressed again and Bryan would leave.

The last thing anyone cares about now is which teenagers are fucking. And they’re adults anyway, not just in numbers; they’ve earned the extra trappings of maturity.

Maybe that’s the lesson, there: perspective. What once seemed so big now seems small. What once seemed small, like the Earth itself, is now vast, its distances impossible to fathom.

Or perhaps what matters here is the hardiness of hope, or of being faithful or maybe just stubborn. How he waited for months, and he thought about—should he move on?—but it just never seemed true that Bryan was dead.

(They haven’t talked about it yet. He doesn’t actually know, for sure, if Bryan counted out the days of their separation like he did, if he had hope in the same way. At the moment, at least, it hardly matters. The possibility of others, that is the least important thing.)

Or it could be that what he’s to learn is something about himself, something he already partly knew: that he’s not a talker; that he does not care, at the moment of reunion, to _talk_. When the Farm Station survivors came through the gates, when he and Bryan saw each other again for the first time, they said only each other’s names, and that was all. He could have thrown him against the side of Alpha Station and kissed him, fucked him, sucked him off there in front of everyone, because _everyone_ hardly mattered, _everyone_ had ceased to be real. But instead they pushed and shoved and grabbed at each other all the way back to Miller’s quarters and he hardly even had the chance to take in the new lines on Bryan’s face or the haunted, thin look about him or even half the new scars and bruises he carries with him on his skin. How different he felt. All drowned out in how _the same_ he felt.

He has no regrets about that.

Bryan is asleep now, and he looks like he’s at peace. Miller feels—mostly—like he’s at peace, too. He props himself up on his elbow and runs the tip of his finger over Bryan’s eyebrows, down his nose. Traces his lips.

What he’s learned is that he thought he’d seen everything, felt everything, survived everything. But he was wrong. Something is swelling in his chest and he almost can’t remember how to breathe.


	61. Bellamy/Clarke: Long Distance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written December 2, 2017.

Somehow she ends up texting him often in the middle of the night. His middle of the night, her late evening. But she pictures him there on the opposite coast, in bed staring at his phone screen, the blue light glowing on his face. Thinking of her.

Bellamy tells her about the weird customers he gets at the bookstore where he’s working, and about the books he reads during slow hours, and sends her pictures from the hiking trails his sister drags him out on every weekend. Clarke texts back pictures of her parents’ pool, hoping to make him jealous (as she is jealous of the woods in his photo, the tall mountain trees), and stories of her weird co-workers at her mayor’s office internship.

Sometimes she sends him pictures of herself.

It’s not that different from last year, at school, when they’d hook up in his dorm room when his roommate was out, and sometimes instead of leaving right away, she’d stay and they’d talk about their classes while she listened to his heartbeat and he traced patterns on her arm with his fingertips.

Except now it’s mostly talking, and only sometimes, awkward texts about what she’d like to do to him, or him to her, her eyes closed and her tongue between her teeth as she tries to picture it, conjure it so strong that she _feels_ it and knows it so well that she can say it.

What she wants.

They’d be good together.

She’s counting down the days until September, when she’ll be able to see him again.

Counting down the days and scared of the days, or nervous at least: will she run into him in the bookstore or on the quad and think _there’s that confident asshole_ , or only _would it be weird to kiss him now?_

The summer sun has finally set and it’s dark on the other side of her window and all around her is an ambient air conditioner hum. Three little dots on the bottom of the screen. She’s waiting.


	62. Jasper/Maya, After School

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written December 4, 2017.
> 
> Previous part: Chapter 50.

Jasper’s waiting for her when she gets out of choir, sitting on the low brick wall that rings the Highpoint campus, one leg beneath him and the other one swinging down toward the sidewalk. He has a book but he’s obviously not reading it. He just keeps it open in front of him while he stares up at the school, or lets himself get distracted by the other students hurrying out across the lawn or down the steps.

At first, he doesn’t notice her, and it gives her a chance to take him in.

She wasn’t entirely expecting him. They’ve met up a couple times since the party but it’s different, somehow, to see him at her school; he sticks out sore-thumb-style in his ratty sneakers and his t-shirt and jeans, while all the other kids are in their pale-blue uniform button down shirts, their khakis. (Maya has her sweater tied around her shoulders and oh FUCK she’s never felt so silly and preppy in her life. She should have guessed he was from Arkadia from the chuck taylors alone.)

For a moment or two she stands off to the side of the main steps, in the shadow of the building, and watches him, as if, invisible in public, private in a crowd, she might catch him in some unguarded moment and learn something new of him. Because she knows so little, yet. Just that he’s a freshman and he goes to public school and he half-crashed Lee’s party a couple weeks ago, and his hair’s growing too long around his ears and in his eyes, and he’s always looking at her like he can see right through her.

He closes his paperback and shoves it in the inside pocket of the jacket he’s not wearing, then reaches for something else inside the pocket. Looks around and thinks better of it. Run his hands through his hair like he’s nervous and–there–she’s seen what she was trying to see.


	63. Clarke/Raven: Family/Kids + Snow Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 11, 2017.

Clarke isn’t a morning person, but her wife is, and their kids take after Raven. That’s how she finds herself awake at 7:30 in the morning on her day off, the gray light of barely-sunrise shining in through the kitchen window, propping her head up on her hand while she sips at her coffee and listens to the chaos break around her.

Raven is making pancakes, and Alice is helping. Janie is sliding across the kitchen tile in her sockfeet. Everyone is being very LOUD.

“You know, we could all be sleeping in right now,” Clarke reminds them, just as Jane almost collides with her knees. Clarke catches her at the last minute, and sets her down in a chair instead. Raven is bringing over plates that smell like warm blueberries and syrup, and that helps, a little.

“And miss all the snow?” Raven asks, shocked, and heads back to the fridge for the orange juice.

“It’s going to be snowing all day,” Clarke reminds her, weary, but Alice is already sliding one of the plates her way and arguing:

“But we want to enjoy _the whole day_.” That’s the sort of ambition Clarke can’t argue with. She’s sorely outnumbered, and beat. And the pancakes are delicious.

Later, they bundle up in their winter coats and hats, and Raven digs the sled out of the garage. It’s not even 9 am and the neighborhood is so deserted that it feels, Clarke can’t help thinking, like they’re the only ones left on Earth. The snow is falling down in fat white splatters on their shoulders and in their hair, piling up in rolling fluffy piles on the sidewalks and lawns and on top of the cars by the curb. She holds Janie’s hand tight as they walk, trudging slowly through the snow and carefully over the ice. And sometimes she looks over at Raven, beautiful and smiling and her hair down around her shoulders, jeweled with pure white, and she thinks, it’s okay, she’s allowed to feel like she’s at peace with this family they’ve made all by themselves, at peace and alone and free to rule over the whole suburb as they see fit.

They head out to the park at the end of the street and climb up the tallest hill, out beyond the buried swingsets and the useless slide. The incline up is steep and slippery, a hazard that makes Clarke nervous only because she has a certain tick when it comes to her daughters, a fearfulness she never felt when she was by herself, and at the top there is only the slightest ledge on which to perch the sled before it tips forward and slides down. The operation of balancing the sled, hopping on, and letting go is thus a delicate one. Raven holds on to the back as the girls both climb on, Alice in front with her little sister holding on behind. And Clarke’s breath catches. They are just there on the ledge, tilting.

Raven lets go.

The sled tips forward and the girls laugh and yell all the way down.


	64. Clarke/Raven: Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 12, 2017.

The Sorting Hat almost put her into Slytherin ( _you are cunning_ , it said, _and sly_ ), and perhaps this is why Raven has such a fascination for the girls in that house. Slytherin girls, she finds, aren’t as loud as the boys. They don’t get into as many fights. They’re the sort who hang out on the sidelines, watching, taking everything in; the dangerous sort you can’t trust because, how can you know what they have stored away? What secrets they’ve brought back to their dorm in the cool damp underground?

Clarke is a little different: prone to speaking her mind. And using her wand when the fancy strikes her. Rumor is she knows more curses than any other witch or wizard in the school, though Raven’s never seen her use one, so perhaps it’s just talk.

They meet for the first time, face to face and alone, in the library late in the evening. Aside from a few nerds and procrastinators, they’re alone. Raven’s doing some research on the magic of flight as a sort of side-project, which is still taking shape within her, and Clarke—Clarke is levitating herself to scan the top shelves in the magical history section.

“You could just use a ladder,” Raven says. Mostly just to get her attention.

Clarke startles, almost falters, but still brings herself down with grace. “Why would I bother with that?” she asks. She has crossed her arms against her chest and raised her brow. Her tie, the silver stripes gleaming in the low-light from the window behind her, is slightly askew and her hair, Raven notes, looks slightly tangled and unkempt. Like something she would like to run her fingers through.

Raven shrugs. “What are you looking for?”

She is so bad at small talk and Clarke is staring at her like she knows. Like she knows this and every other secret Raven has ever had, which is startling and intriguing and puts her on the defensive, but which also, in a way, makes her feel like she is lighting up inside.

“What are _you_ looking for?” Clarke counters. 

_Got me there_ , Raven thinks. _I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter._

“I just like the library at night,” she lies. It’s not entirely a lie: this is the best time to be alone with the books, or almost alone, and to feel that different sort of magic sparking between the pages as she flips them: a magic tangled in the smell of paper and ink, which pricks at her skin as she focuses on the words and watches them taking on patterns and meaning in front of her.

Clarke is nodding, slowly and thoughtfully. “Me too.” She’s twirling her wand between her fingers now. This is a good excuse for Raven to watch her fingers.

_She knows more curses than anyone in the school. Even the professors._

Perhaps that is why she is doing it.

“Hey, look,” Raven says, “I’m shit at levitating.” This is a lie. She’s never tried it on herself but she could do it, she’s sure. But she needs an excuse to talk and an excuse to move and an excuse to keep this girl close and so she reaches for whatever she can. “So, could you get a book for me?”

Clarke smiles at her, sly and cunning and quiet in the dark. She taps Raven’s shoulder with her wand. "I’ve seen you in class,” she says. _You’re lying_ , she means, _and I see it_. “But okay. What book do you need?”


	65. Raven/Octavia: Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 13, 2017.

Raven is still recovering when the first snow falls over Camp Jaha, eleven days after the survivors return from Mount Weather. There aren’t any windows in medbay or her quarters, the only two places she spends any time, so she doesn’t actually see it coming down. She has to hear about it, like a rumor from the outside. Abby walks into their her appointment with white fluff on her shoulders and in hair and Raven’s heart sinks: the world is changing out there, revolving and darkening and chilling, and she didn’t even know it. She’s come to know of it only by chance.

That afternoon, Octavia helps her stumble her way outside. She leans so heavily on Octavia and her cane that her feet barely touch the ground, but it’s still painful and a trial just to hobble over to the chair Octavia’s set out for her next to the Alpha Station entrance. Part of the challenge is keeping Octavia from trying to take on too much of Raven’s weight. “You can’t actually carry me, you know,” Raven reminds her, low and grumbling, as she rubs at her leg and tries to bite back a wince. “You just have to let me _lean_ on you.”

“I _could_ carry you,” Octavia mumbles back. She sounds half-defiant, half-embarrassed. Like a little girl, trying to be grown.

“Your brother could carry me,” Raven corrects. “Don’t try to be a… perfect strong warrior all the time. Or whatever.”

Octavia rolls her eyes and leans back against the side of the ship, her hands behind her back and her hair falling in her face. She’s still wearing braids along the sides, like the Grounders do. From certain angles she looks like a stranger.

“Like you’d ever let him. Or anyone. Maybe you should take your own advice.”

From others, it’s like no time has passed at all.

“I’m no warrior,” Raven answers, and then, at last, she takes in the landscape in front of her. A fine blanket of snow has obscured the dirt of their shoddy, ugly camp. Footsteps have tramped through it, revealing the dirt beneath in haphazard trails, and the wall still rises up at the border—nothing has been _transformed_. But she feels a low trill of amazement anyway, skittering up her spine. This is snow. And it’s started coming down now, too, thin little pinpricks of cold from (she looks up, all the way up) a dull sky the color of water pooling in dirt. Swirls and swirls of snow. Light, almost invisible; an unexpected flurry of movement to make her dizzy. 

She flails out one arm to steady herself and something solid and safe anchors her at her shoulder, and she recognizes, only after she has closed her eyes and opened them again, that it is Octavia’s hand. She grabs Octavia’s arm with her hand. Octavia is standing so close now, just behind her, both hands on both shoulders and Raven is grateful, because as long as she’s still tethered safely to the Earth, she feels safe enough to lose herself in the sky.


	66. Miller/Bryan: Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by valexwest.
> 
> Written December 16, 2017.

At first it’s just how it used to be, except more desperate, and he can’t forget for a moment that they haven’t seen each other in five months or that they’re on the ground, or that the last time the most they could touch was just their hands across the table, during visiting hours. They don’t talk. Time for that later. Miller pulls him to his new quarters and locks the door behind them and they grab at each other, scared and frantic, craving skin.

It feels just the same and not at all the same: like coming home, and like exploring new lands. Three months in the wilderness has made Bryan stronger. Not as strong as Miller but enough to shove him down (the mattress creaks under his weight, the force of his falling), enough to pin his arms in place. And he bites harder now, and he is bolder, and he needs so much more. Miller feels the same need mirrored within himself. Worse than he thought it would be. Worse than he thought it was.

He thought he had this longing under control.

He didn’t; he’s been lost in a wilderness too.

Sometimes it feels like fighting, and it’s hard to remember that they love each other. He runs his hands down Bryan’s back like he wants to possess him. Then he reaches the scar and does not understand it, and his first instinct is confusion, because this body that he memorized and dreamed of and rebuilt again and again in his head, skin and muscle and bone he reshaped behind his eyelids at night when the Earth felt most foreign, it was not like this. Not broken like this. Not scarred like this. For a half-second he’s revolted and then he is guilty and then he is beaten, because he’s seen worse, but he’s never felt a dizziness wash up through his stomach to his head and then down again to his knees, like his own body is trying to turn itself inside out.

He doesn’t know where the wound came from or what he means. Not knowing—that’s maybe where the sickness is coming from.

Bryan slips away from him and turns around onto his back, looks up. “Is it that bad?” he asks.

Miller shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk yet.”

“I don’t either.” He leans up on his elbows. “You’re the one who stopped.”

Yeah, and he’s sorry for stopping. What cannot yet be explained or yet faced head on must be pushed back and stomped down and lost in the hard battering of his heart against his ribs and in the sweat that pools between his shoulder blades but later, much later, he leans over and kisses a line along the scar. He feels the ripple edges of it with his tongue. He memorizes its taste. It is a new knowledge of the Earth and it’s for him and him alone; and he will consume it, and see.


	67. Raven/Octavia: Bedtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 18, 2017.

Octavia, still restless, has been gone for three days. Official business. Raven has started taking late shifts and working longer hours, so that she falls asleep exhausted as soon as she’s shoved her shoes off her feet and crawled into bed. This is a coincidence only but when Monty sends her packing not long after dinner, tells her they’re both too exhausted to work anything more out today, she has to swallow down a bitter taste like worry, an irrational worry, before she can open their bedroom door.

It’s all right.

She undresses slowly. Sets aside her brace, takes down her hair. Pulls on an old t-shirt and slips in under the blankets. It is autumn now, mid-autumn: she’s come to understand the seasons with long-buried instinct, that it will be colder in a few weeks, that the frisson of chill up her spine is a harbinger of things to come.

The trip is not a tense negotiation or a war council but for trade. That’s all. Her sense of loss, a bubble about to burst, is paranoia. That’s all. 

She keeps the light on by her side of the bed and feels out each muscle in her body, one by one, pretending she is waiting for sleep to come, until she hears the front door of the cabin open and her spine stiffens. First in defensive mode, then to attack. Then she hears Octavia’s measured steps and her voice: “Raven? I see your light. Are you here?”

“Yeah,” she calls back. “In here.”

This, this nameless thing, this intertwining, this balancing act, is still so tentative that in the shallows of an absence it threatens always to wreck against the shore. She never knows what to say, upon Octavia’s return.

She only turns her head so that she’s staring at the doorway when Octavia first takes a half-step in.

She’s wearing her traveling clothes, too many layers for the season, and her hair back in a tight, severe bun. She stares at Raven as if she were no more familiar than a wild rabbit paused in Octavia’s path. Her expression softens only slowly, only after she’s closed the door behind her and toed off both her boots.

“How was your trip?” Raven asks.

“Oh—” A few seconds’ pause before she answers, and her voice sounds distant, but her eyes never leave Raven’s face. “Good. Got a deal in place, it's—I’ll tell you tomorrow.” She takes her hand from her pocket, with it a small sack that she lets fall at the bottom of the bed. Then she starts to undress. Raven’s curious about the gift, or bounty, or discovery, but not as curious as she is to see Octavia take herself apart, layer by layer, from the top down.

Everything she wears, even now, is a costume. She’s not really herself until it’s all gone.

Every now and then (first her jacket, then her socks) she smiles, not shy, but like she knows the secret (her heavy overshirt, her belt) shared between them. Mostly she just watches Raven (the lighter shirt beneath), unblinking and serious (her pants, the light leggings underneath), maybe daring. Then she lets down her hair. Sits down on the edge of the bed and pulls the bag toward her, and uncinches the leather tie at the top.

“I brought you these,” she says, quiet, her voice more shy than her eyes ever were. She’s never brought a gift before, and Raven’s not sure what to expect. She sits up, slowly, lest her sore body rebel, and watches as Octavia arrays in front of her a collection of beautiful carved wooden combs.

“Why—?”

“Because we don’t need them. But I wanted you to have them.”

Raven picks up the largest of the set and runs her fingertips along the edge. “I didn’t know you liked the finer things,” she says, and tries to smile.

Octavia rests her hand over Raven’s other hand and answers, “Yes you did.” Then, before Raven can reply: “Let me come out your hair for you. Let me—every night. Before bed.”

What she’s really saying is _I’m trying. I’m trying._

Raven links their fingers together and nods, doesn’t trust herself for a long moment to speak, nods again. “Yes,” she answers, finally. “I’d like that.”


	68. Miller/Jackson: Staying Over Pt. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written December 19, 2017.
> 
> Previous parts: Chapters 34 and 43.

Jackson does not leave and dawn is the hardest hour to force oneself from bed. So they do not. Miller lies on his side, tracing his fingers along Jackson’s side, watching the movement as if it were created by someone else, and not thinking.

“Guess I spent the night,” Jackson says, finally, and Miller looks up just in time to see him smile: a light half-smile like he should be embarrassed, or guilty, but is not.

“Guess so,” he agrees.

It does not feel momentous, and he’s glad for that. Because if it did, he might be tempted to back out, right about now. He feels over the place where second thoughts should go, but finds nothing. Perhaps that is a revelation in itself: if he were panicking now, that would mean there is something to panic over, a fear of falling too hard or too fast, of an intimacy into which he is not ready to throw himself again. But all he really feels is calm.

“Doesn’t freak you out?” Jackson asks. He takes Miller’s hand and stops its movement, pulls until Miller’s half on top of him again and they are nose to nose.

“I told you,” he answers. Slow and steady. “It’s just a roommate thing. I don’t want–”

“To have to answer all their questions, I know, I know.”

“Why?” He leans in a little lower, so close that he can’t look into Jackson’s eyes without his crossing. “Are _you_ freaking out?”

“No.”

Might be a lie. Miller doesn’t know him well enough yet to be sure. Maybe it’s not possible to ever know someone that well.

“Good. Because…” He hesitates over the words. What he wants to say, what he started out so confidently to say, is _this feels nice_. That’s all. _You stayed because **this** feels **good**. _ But he knows that if he said it aloud it would sound like the sort of dorky thing middle schoolers say at dances, naive and silly and young. Not like how it sounds in his head, which is like _relief_.

 _I’m taking this minute by minute_ , he wants to say. _And right now I just want a minute more–_


	69. Bellamy/Clarke: Santa and Elf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "What did you ask for this Christmas?" requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 24, 2017.

Clarke takes off her green and red striped elf hat and her pointy elf ears and asks, “What did you ask for this Christmas?”, for no other reason than to break the silence that always falls over them as they crowd into the bookstore storage room after a shift to change. The elf job is, of course, temporary: four weekends in a row from just after Thanksgiving until right before Christmas. But it’s nice to have some extra change in her pocket for gifts and, more importantly, it gets her in the Christmas spirit. And Christmas is only the most magical time of the year.

Bellamy, his foot propped up on the stepladder, is halfway through unlacing one of his boots. He looks up and shoots her a skeptical raised-eyebrow look. “Planning to compete for my job next year, Griffin?”

She rolls her eyes. “Just trying to be friendly. We’ve only spent, I don’t know, thirty hours with each other—we should get to know each other.”

“It’s a little late for that, I think.” He pulls off the boot, and stands up straight again in his sockfeet. Without his hat or his fake beard and with the stuffing from his belly already bunched up on the floor, he looks oddly deflated, and young. Not a jolly old elf from the North Pole but a college kid with a holiday-season job. A tired, somewhat surly looking kid, to be precise. Still handsome, though, with his tousled hat-hair and dark eyes.

“Okay,” Clarke admits. “You’re right. You just…never seemed like you wanted to talk.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine.”

She takes off her wide, shiny belt and the green jacket and then the pointy shoes. Their jingly bells chime too loudly, too cheerfully, in the awkward silence, and she hushes them with one hand over the toes. Bellamy doesn’t speak again until he’s pulled on his sweater and she’s buttoned up her shirt, but when he does, he actually sounds apologetic.

“Hey.”

Clarke turns around and mimics his prior expression back at him: raised eyebrows and pinched lips.

“I didn’t mean to sound—I didn’t mean to be rude, there. I’m just not really into Christmas.”

Her eyebrows creep up closer to her hairline. “Could have fooled me, Mr. Claus.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolls his eyes and waves it off. “I can pretend to be festive for a couple of hours at a time but—”

“You have to go full-on Grinch afterward to make up for it?”

He snorts. “Something like that. This job is a good way to get some extra money for gifts, so my sister has a good Christmas. That’s all. And it’s easier than some of the other holiday jobs I’ve had, so I can’t complain.”

Clarke considers for a moment. “Except for just now, a little.”

“That wasn’t complaining, that was snapping when you tried to be cheery.”

“Friendly, not cheery.”

Bellamy picks up his crumpled bundle of Santa clothes, stuffs them in his backpack, and swings it over one shoulder. “Are you always this argumentative?”

“Tell me what you really want for Christmas and I’ll answer.”

He doesn’t answer right away, doesn’t say anything as she pulls on her jacket and collects her elf costume. But he does crack a smile when she puts the ears back on.

“I don’t know. Honestly. Like I said, I’m not really into Christmas.”

“Appalling.” She pulls out her elf hat and sticks it on his head. “Santa Claus can’t dislike Christmas. It’s unacceptable.”

“I take it you’re going to try to make me change my mind?”

“Yes.” She links her arm through his and pulls him toward the door. “I’m going to do just that.”


	70. Bellamy/Clarke: Slutty Santa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "I guess someone's not getting any use of that slutty Santa outfit they bought," requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 25, 2017.

Already Clarke’s closet has disgorged a dozen Christmas sweater, six winter jackets, innumerable unpaired gloves, and three silly holiday hats. If it were anyone other than Bellamy helping her sort through the mess, she’d be embarrassed. But they’ve known each other too long and seen each other through too much to still have room for shame between them.

After an hour of sorting, Clarke needs a break, so she’s sitting back against her pillows next to a pile of donatable cold-weather clothes, while Bellamy disappears into the depths of the back of the closet. She can hear him, rattling clothes hangers and providing the occasional commentary on his finds.

Like:

“You don’t need a jacket this heavy. It never gets that cold here.”

“It’s a ski jacket, Bellamy.”

“And when was the last time you went skiing, again?”

Or: “A sweater that _lights up_? Does this even still work?”

“Ummmm….”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Then, after a while, he grows quiet. Only the occasional sound of hanger clanking against hanger and fabric rustling against fabric disrupts the silence.

When he finally emerges, he’s holding up a skimpy red mini-dress trimmed in white faux-fur, a glorified set of lingerie really, with a red and white hat hung over the cross-bar of the hanger.

“And… I guess you’re not getting any use out of this slutty Santa outfit either?”

Maybe, Clarke decides, she was wrong to think she was beyond the point of feeling embarrassed around him.

She pretends she isn’t blushing, and shrugs. “It’s a gift from an ex. No, I am not telling you which one.”

“So…” He tilts the dress toward him again, gives it a once over. “For the donation pile then?”

“Yeah, mm-hmm.” She rolls her eyes. “For the holiday harlot section of Goodwill.” To donate something is to admit to owning it in the first place—she’d rather throw it in the garbage but that seems like something of a waste.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, very seriously, and sits down next to her in the one still-empty spot on her bed. “If you never wear something, you should give it away. And if you’re going to keep an article of clothing, you should actually wear it.”

She’s really impressed, how he keeps a straight face through almost every word of that edifying speech. Carefully, she takes the outfit from his lap and holds it up. “And let me guess,” she answers, “you think I should keep this one.”

“Yes.” He nods, once, and carefully suggests, “You could even…wear it tonight?”


	71. Bellamy/Clarke: Mistletoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt, "Oh my God, is that mistletoe?" requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 26, 2017.

“Look, we all understand that you’re young and in love,” Miller begins, and Bellamy immediately feels an intervention coming on. He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and heads for the fridge for another drink. Faint strains of Christmas music waft in from the living room, along with the sound of small talk and laughter.

“Says the guy who moved in with his boyfriend and wasn’t seen or heard from for a week,” Bellamy answers. What he means is: _I don’t need a lecture about sappiness in relationships from you_ , but Miller doesn’t take the hint. Or rather, he takes it, and then rejects it completely.

“Nice try, Blake, but have we ever bothered anyone with PDA, ever? No. Now sit down and listen,” he orders, then pulls out a stool from the kitchen island for himself. His face is alarmingly serious for someone who’s been drinking Monty’s spiked eggnog for the last two hours. “No one is complaining that you and Clarke are together, okay? It’s much better than the constant sexual tension at _every single_ friend group gathering. We’re okay with the hugging and the kissing and her sitting in your lap—”

“Who’s ‘we’? Which ‘we’ are you speaking for, exactly?”

“Everyone. Don’t change the subject. We’re even willing to accept the occasional pet name. But the mistletoe is too much. It has to go. It’s in every goddamn doorway in the whole apartment! And not just doorways! Do you know how many people I’ve kissed tonight?”

He pauses, obviously waiting for Bellamy to hazard a guess. Miller, when he’s had a few, tends to get a little dramatic. Bellamy just shrugs.

“Everyone. Murphy twice.”

“I think you can blame Murphy for that.”

“It’s too much,” Miller continues, undeterred. “You’re dating now, you know—you don’t need an excuse to—”

“Oh my God,” Jasper’s voice, unexpectedly shrill, echoes out from the other side of the apartment. Miller swivels in his seat and looks over his shoulder, following the clamor. “Is that _mistletoe_? In the **_shower_**?”

Miller turns back around slowly, throws up his hands, and concludes, “I rest my case. Seriously, Bellamy—the shower?”

Bellamy just shrugs. Miller’s right about one thing: he’s knee-deep in new-love and nothing can bother him. Not even unfounded accusations about his decorating habits. “You’ve made some good points,” he says, with as serious a nod as he can manage. “I’ll take it all under consideration, I promise. Now why don’t you get into the Christmas spirit?” He pulls Miller up from his seat and leads him back into the living room—stopping for a kiss in the doorway, of course, under the mistletoe.

“You were gone a while,” Clarke notes, as she slides up next to him and links her arm through his. It’s just about impossible, nowadays, for them to be in the same room and not be holding hands, or sitting crushed against each other, or caught up in an embrace. It’s a good feeling, this magnetic closeness. He’ll keep the flame of it burning bright for as long as he can. “Should I be jealous?”

“Never.” He smiles, wide and happy and content. Then he carefully takes off her headband, the one with the sprig of mistletoe waving from the top, and puts it on his own head, so it dangles over them both. “Can you believe it? We’re under the mistletoe.”

“Again! What a coincidence!”

“I guess we have no choice but to—”

As they kiss, a half dozen voices groan. Bellamy and Clarke ignore them all.


	72. Jasper/Monty: Leaving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt, "What do you mean by _leaving_?" requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written December 29, 2017.

“What do you mean leaving?” Monty asks, the first time in a long time, possibly ever, that he has sounded so completely baffled and confused.

It’s an odd look on him.

“Tomorrow,” Jasper clarifies. “In the morning. Early.” He’s kneeling on the floor, stuffing clothes and supplies into his backpack. It’s the same one he’s had since their dropship days because some objects (like some people) still survive.

Monty sits cross-legged on the bed above him, looking down on him with a gaze Jasper can feel. And it’s not, Jasper realizes lightly, that he’s confused but rather that he’s uncomprehending, that he’s reached at last a concept that he cannot understand at all.

“Don’t worry,” he adds. “I’ll be back. Or at least, that’s the plan.”

“Not funny.”

Sorry if half a decade underground didn’t lighten up my sense of humor any, Jasper thinks, but doesn’t say aloud. No need. He’s actually in quite a good mood, and he doesn’t want to bring anyone else down.

“So, what, are you going as a Guard?” Monty asks. He sounds insulted, or like he’s trying to make Jasper feel insulted.

“No. I’m going as a human being.” He looks up, catches Monty’s eye and rests his hand over his chest—where the scar is, though he is not, for once, thinking about the scar. “That’s still a worthwhile thing to be, you know.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Never mind. Forget it.”

He stuffs another shirt in as a top layer, a heavier bit of outerwear, in case it gets cold. Then he zips the bag up again. He feels good, he feels ready. It’s been a long time since he’s wandered in the world.

Monty’s still watching him, trying to see right through him.

“Do you want to go, too?” Jasper asks. “Octavia said it’ll probably be a week before we’re back. We’re going out to the new Trikru settlement, to trade.”

Monty doesn’t answer for a long while. Maybe he’s thinking; maybe he’s forgotten they’re having a conversation. “I’m needed here,” he says, at last.

Jasper leaves his bag on the floor and pulls himself to his feet. You get about twenty-five good years, if you’re lucky, his father had said to him once. Twenty-five good years with your body before it starts creaking and cracking and slowing down. He’d been in a weird mood, when he said it: wistful and distant. But Jasper understands now, what he meant. He got fifteen good years with his body, before it started betraying him, except in his case it started with the mind and wandered on down. Now somehow he’s twenty-two and his knees feel weak as he stands, random pain shoots through the left one and he waits a moment before he crosses to the bed.

He puts his hands on Monty’s shoulders and, in the same movement, draws him in for a hug. “I love you,” he murmurs. It is easier for him to say now than it ever was; for Monty sometimes still a struggle. “But I have to see something beyond the bunker and the settlement or I’ll lose my mind. I’ll be back soon. And next time,” he draws back, “you’ll come with me.”

It isn’t a question, but still the expression around Monty’s eyes softens and he even manages, almost, a smile. Forgiveness, or apology. Or both. He nods. “All right. Okay. Next time I’ll go too.”


	73. Jaha: Submarine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "submarine" requested by jasprjordamn on tumblr.
> 
> Written January 4, 2018.

Before he was Chancellor, when he was still an engineer and he lived on Mecha Station Deck 3 and he made it home for dinner every night with his son, Thelonious used to spend his evenings playing games. He and Wells. Chess was their favorite, but they played others, games Thelonious’s dad taught him and that Wells will teach his child—that’s what he thought then, a long line of memory that will lead back to the Ground. Not as important as the memory of farming or building houses or machines, but memory all the same.

Sometimes they play battleship, with two sheets of paper and a couple of pens. By the time he turns seven, Wells is old enough to be insulted if his father lets him win, which makes the games more interesting but defeat no less benign. Wells is a stoic kid. But when he wins he allows himself a wide toothy grin and a self-congratulatory clap and once, after a marathon of losses, he even jumped out of his chair and gave a shout.

One night, Thelonious announces, “You’ve sunk my last battleship,” in a tone of resignation and surrender, and Wells doesn’t look up. He’s staring down at their hand-made graph paper, the long rectangles of his ships, the glaring Xs where his father’s attacks hit. Thelonious wants to ask him what’s wrong, but he knows not to rush: his son will tell him in time. When the rights words come.

Wells has always been a thoughtful kid that way.

“Dad, did they used to have real battleships?” he asks at last, and Thelonious is not surprised. Quiet like that, in his son, in himself, in almost everyone he knows, always means one thing. Earth. The ancient past, the distant future.

“Yes, they did,” he answers. “A long time ago.”

“And other ships?”

Wells already knows the answers, of course, not just because he is a smart kid, but because they live on a ship. A gigantic ship, in space. Perhaps man’s most advanced and most impressive achievement.

Or arguably, Thelonious adds to himself, thinking about the bombs and the fires that have long haunted his dreams—arguably not.

“And other ships,” he echoes. “Ships for war and for peace. For fishing. For recreation. Even ships that could travel under the water.”

Wells wrinkles his nose and shuts his eyes, tight, for a second, then brings up the word: “Submarines.”

“Mmhmm. Submarines.” Only half watching what his own hands are doing, he turns his battleship graph over and sketches out a picture, generic and broad, of what such a ship would have looked like. Wells pulls his chair around to the side of the table to watch him.

“Do you know how to make one? I mean—could you? If we were on Earth?”

Thelonious laughs. “All by myself? I doubt it.” His son looks disappointed, and he immediately feels guilty: no need to puncture so soon that bubble they live in, where he is perfect, where he can accomplish anything. “But I’m sure I could figure it out.”

“You could,” Wells agrees, bright, with a decisive quick nod of his head. He’s leaning up on the table with his forearms, crossed, as a lever, staring down at the picture as it takes shape. Thelonious doesn’t exactly know the fine details of submarines. But he’s looked at just about every image of Earth machinery in the library archive, and he’s fairly confident his sketch is accurate, or at least accurate enough.

“So could you,” he reminds him. “You can do anything. With ingenuity, and patience, and determination. Just—”

“Don’t give up,” Wells finishes. He knows the refrain. But only the slightest hint of the boredom of recitation bleeds into his voice. “I know. I won’t. I promise.”

Thelonious brings up this memory sometimes and asks himself, what did he think, then, that he was preparing his son for? Not a life on the ground, not yet. Or maybe he was. Despite his pragmatism, despite everything he knew, at that time, to be inarguably and unalterably true, he was. Perhaps even then he believed.


	74. Harper/Monroe: Rubber Duck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "rubber duck," requested by jasprjordamn on tumblr.
> 
> Written January 6, 2018.

Zoe Monroe lives in a house full of boys, so she’s used to them—some of them, the ones who are into that sort of thing—bringing random girls home at random times. But not like this. 

To clarify:

Girls at the breakfast table or watching movies on the living room couch or coming out of someone else’s room: yes. Girls in the upstairs bathroom taking a bubble bath in the clawfoot tub, with the door half-open: no.

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry,” she fumbles, turning on her heel and covering her eyes with her hand as soon as she realizes her mistake. Even though it’s an understandable mistake, since the door wasn’t closed and she does, actually, live here.

“No, don’t apologize!” the girl says, and Monroe hears the sound of water sloshing that means, maybe—she’s not standing up, is she? “It’s my fault. I thought I closed the door, but I guess I didn’t shut it properly… I’m Harper, by the way.”

Holding a conversation while staring intently at the opposite wall seems rude, even more rude than just turning around and looking at the naked stranger in her house, so Monroe pivots back around, slowly. The girl, Harper, is holding out her hand. Monroe takes another step forward and shakes it, carefully, isn’t able to avoid some bubbles migrating to her hand.

Harper’s skin is soft and wet and smooth and she’s pretty, so much prettier than Monroe could have noticed in the first half-second she saw her, and she’s starting to wish she’d stayed turned around. 

“Yeah, um. The door sticks. You really have to shove it to get it to stay shut.” She demonstrates, using her shoulder to push the door into its frame until it clicks decidedly closed. Then, just in case it looks weird that she’s locking herself in a small room with a naked woman she just met, she opens it again. “See—like that. I think it’s the humidity… Everyone else hates it so this bathroom is basically mine.”

“It is?” Harper hits her with a stunned, sad expression, the last sort of response Monroe was expecting. Then, even more surprisingly, her eyes narrow and her lips draw thin, and she looks about ready to murder someone. “I should have known it was too nice to be Murphy’s. He was the one who told me I should use this one for my bath–I’m sorry. You must think I’m a total asshole for invading your space.”

 _Total asshole_ was pretty much the last descriptor on Monroe’s mind, but instead of admitting as much, she asks, “Murphy? Murphy told you?”

“Yeah… I’m visiting him.” Harper tilts her head, curious, and the mad assassin look drops almost instantly. She looks angelic again. _Girl’s a chameleon_ , Monroe thinks, and sits down slowly on the closed toilet lid. “He didn’t tell you? He said he told all his housemates.”

“Yeah, um…” Talking has never been a problem for her before and yet here it is, again, a problem. Being flustered does not suit her well. But she’s a bit distracted, not only by the multitude of bubbles all but escaping over the side of the tub, or by Harper’s leg, peeking out from the fluffy mass of them as she props her heel up on the tub’s edge, but by the yellow rubber duck she’s just noticed, floating on the far side by the wall. “Um. He mentioned… he mentioned his friend McIntyre was coming.” She snaps her eyes away forcefully and focuses on Harper’s face instead. Realization dawns, and she nods to herself slowly. “And let me guess… you’re Harper McIntyre.”

Harper nods. “Murphy’s the only one who calls me by my last name. You thought I was a guy, didn’t you?”

_Well I don’t think so anymore._

“Might have.”

“Well…surprise!” She waves her hands in a small jazz hands motion, and sends a stray bubble rocketing into Monroe’s hair.

It’s cute. She looks down at her hands. She flips through possible neutral topics in her head, fast, and lands on: “Hey, can I… ask you something? About the…” she gestures vaguely, “the duck?”

“What? Oh.” Harper picks up the little yellow toy and turns it over and around, as casually curious as if she’d just discovered it herself. “I saw it at that little thrift shop place downtown. Thought it was cute.” She smiles again, and Monroe feels the same expression on her own face, like a mirror that cannot help but reflect what it sees. Harper tosses her the duck and she catches it, barely, gives it a squeeze and listens to it quack. Huh.

“You found this at the thrift store? The one on Mayfield?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the one. We were only in there for a minute—”

“So Murphy could visit his girlfriend?”

Harper nods. “Yep. It was pretty cool, though. Some really weird stuff in there.”

“The weirdest,” Monroe agrees. Carefully, gingerly, she sets the duck back in the water. It floats between the bubbles, serene. “If you want to check it out again…maybe we could go together?”

Harper picks the duck up again, squeezes it twice so it gives two enthusiastic quacks, and says, “I’d love to.”


	75. Jackson: Paper Plane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt "paper plane," requested by jasprjordamn on tumblr.
> 
> Written January 8, 2018.

Jackson grew up a quiet kid, lost in his own head half the time. Smart enough, but uninterested in homework and school; the sort of student who inspired if-only-he-would-apply-himself speeches at every parent-teacher conference from grades one through ten.

 _Apply himself_ , he’d think, slouching as his parents tried to explain. _Apply, apply, to what, and for what purpose? Toward what future?_

“Don’t you have dreams?” an art teacher asked him once. She was the sort who floated on air. Always wore long scarves and flowing skirts and used to lean in across the table with her hands flat on the top and ask him these questions like trying to pull him in to something, some alternate plane, with the hypnotic sound of her voice. He always hated that.

 _Dreams_ , he thought. _Plenty of those. What you mean is ambition._

“Eric,” she tried again, almost pleading, and he just shrugged. He’d sketched out the day’s assignment in the first half of class, good enough, then grabbed a spare sheet of paper and started folding it into a plane.

Things he used to dream: folding a gigantic plane out of a gigantic piece of paper, climbing in, flying away; jumping aboard a sailboat, anchors up, strong wind, blowing away; digging a deep hole, disappearing into the Earth, melting through its core, coming through the other side.

His defining curse, he’d decided, was being wistful enough to create the most vivid and most gripping alternate lives, smart enough and levelheaded enough to see just as clearly the truth, the falsity of them.

By the end of high school, he’d pulled the school thing together enough to get into college, though barely. The present lightened—barely—but the future stayed murky and uncertain, for a long while. He kept fidgeting, kept moving, and the night dreams became sharper, the daydreams more surreal.

“You like to keep your hands busy, don’t you?” a boyfriend observed once.

“Is that some sort of weird come on?”

Turning down the corners of his textbooks to mark pages, writing notes in the margins of his notes, turning old tests into airplanes, waiting for something to coalesce.

“A little unnecessary now, don’t you think?” the boyfriend asked.

After graduation, uncertain, dizzy with the sensation of tripping over off the edge of the Earth, he got a job as an EMT, and only then, holding life in his hands, did he understand what he’d been waiting for all along.


	76. Jasper/Miller: Morbid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 10, 2019.
> 
> Part of the [Press Play universe](http://archiveofourown.org/series/851406).

Maybe it’s a little morbid, but sometimes he likes to think back on all the times he almost died, or could have died: really roll them around on his tongue, get the full weight and taste for them and then let them melt there, the bitter brackish taste of almost-death like dark topsoil mixed with riverwater, triggering the scent of decay, on a loop.

“A little morbid?” Miller opens his eyes wide, raises his eyebrows. He’s on his back staring up at the ceiling. The blinds are mostly closed but a shade of fierce sunset, like a fire raging, bleeds through. He lets out a long, audible breath through his nose.

“That’s a judgmental exhale,” Jasper observes.

“That’s a fucked-up thing you were telling me,” Miller answers.

Is it? Or is it just the truth, the hard calcite truth to cut your palms on, jagged and sharp to the touch? It’s been death, death, death for a year. Death on the surface and all the way down.

But if he keeps on digging he’ll find something beneath.

Maybe he’s just digging up graves and setting free ghosts.

“The officer who arrested me,” he says, which is apparently not what Miller was expecting, because he turns his head to look at Jasper again. “He said—” He looks out into the far distance. His toes curl at the bedsheets and the blanket. “ _‘You think you’ll be floated kid? You better hope not_.’”

Miller doesn’t answer for a long while. But he’s turned on his side and he’s doing that thing he sometimes does, which he would never admit to, some sort of vestigial romantic trait, where he takes Jasper’s hand and plays with his fingers, stares at them like they might be the only truly fascinating objects in the world.

Then, eventually: “What did you say?”

Jasper shrugs. “Said I had three years.” The corner of his mouth curls up. “Joke’s on him. I probably outlived him.”

But upon discovery of another ghost, or body, the smile falls away and he falls silent.

Tries to be silent. But he can feel them coming—

“Or I could have been speared to death, or died of an infection, or been killed by a Grounder, or lost in the woods, or acid fogged, or been drained of my blood or my bone marrow, or been shot by a Mount Weather guard, or died of hypothermia—”

—A vomit of words, a painful ripping forth of words like he’s being turned inside out, and these are his guts pooling between the pillows and dripping into the creases in the sheets. Miller is holding him. Repeating “Stop, stop, stop,” over and over, like he thinks it’s soothing, until finally, because it hits its rhythm and because Jasper, if he does not stop talking, will cease to be able to breathe, it is.

“None of that happened,” Miller tells him, words almost lost in the space behind his ear. His voice sounds hard, like a Guard’s voice, giving orders. “You’re still here. Just—” He swallows down hard, Jasper can feel it, on a knot of frustration and his arms grip him tighter, so tight it hurts. “You’re still here,” he says again, the simplest truth there is, and all he can say.


	77. Jasper/Maya: Chem Lab

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 15, 2018.
> 
> In the same universe as Parts 50, 62, 46, and my fic oh well, you've got me under your spell.

Jasper stands in the doorway of the lab for a long moment, taking it in with an expression of dropped-jaw amazement on his face. He looks like a total dork with those big scuba-type goggles stuck on the top of his head, but overall, his excitement is endearing.

Cute.

“So this is what all those big donation dollars go to,” he says, finally taking a few steps inside to examine the equipment up close. Maya leans in the doorway still, letting herself smile her own wide dorky grin as she watches him, since his back is turned to her anyway and it’s safe.

“Some of them,” she answers. “You don’t have stuff like this over at Arkadia?”

“Um, well, first of all our lab space is about two-thirds this size even though our student body is, what, like three times as big as yours?” He looks at her over his shoulder, probably catches the fond look on his face because his own smile seems, she thinks, rather proud. Then he turns forward again and continues his tour. He opens cupboards and pokes at beakers and test tubes, takes out a Bunsen burner and examines the hose. “And our burners are about 500 years old. And—oh man, what’s this?” He peaks into another cabinet and stumbles back, apparently absolutely shocked by his discovery.

Maya hurries over to see what he’s found, but it’s only a shelf full of complicated looking glassware. Which is a little disappointing.

But it’s nice to have an excuse to stand so close to him. And when he looks up at her his whole expression is glowing, categorically pure and blissful, and that growing fondness she feels for him sends off another flower into bloom.

Finally she brings herself to ask: “What are we looking at?”

“A distillation set. Several distillation sets, actually—do you really use these? Do your teachers trust you to use these?” He reaches out a hand, then draws back. “I think mine would rather die. You break one tiny piece of glass and it’s all useless… Beautiful, though, don’t you think?”

It’s just glass, Maya thinks. Glass in pleasing shapes. Glass used for some purpose she only barely understands.

“Yeah,” she answers, and rests her hand on his shoulder like it’s nothing. “It’s a masterpiece.”

Jasper’s eyes narrow. “Are you making fun of me?”

Maya grins. “No. I’m absolutely not. I have only the slightest idea what distillation even means, but I am not making fun of you.”

At first, she thinks he might argue—she’s not doing a very good job of being convincing, not because she’s lying but because she’s distracted by him, by his shoulder, by the squeak of his sneaker on the linoleum as he turns, by the way his arm bumps against her leg. But then he smiles, nodding as he closes the cabinet again. “All right. Well this is not my coolest moment so,” he shrugs, “just so you know, I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”


	78. Bellamy/Clarke: At a Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written January 20, 2018.

They meet at the house party of a kid Clarke doesn’t really know, something Raven dragged her to, against her better judgment. There’s a band playing in the living room. Local kids, all bass and slurred lyrics creating a cacophony of sound. She feels the drums as she grabs herself a drink. And then there is the boy, who sits next to her on the couch and lets his leg press against her leg, even though he’s talking to someone else, a conversation that Clarke can tell means nothing.

The drink, the bass, the talking: nothing.

The room is warm and overcrowded and she can’t breathe right, in a good way.

When the other guy leaves, as Clarke always knew he would leave, she introduces herself and asks, “Do you have enough room?” with a concerned exaggeration of a frown. She bangs the side of her shoe against his shoe. He’s wearing an impressive pair of boots, and her own feet, in their sneakers, look small next to his; she’s picturing him pinning her to a wall: an idle fantasy as flimsy as fairy wings, and as real. It’s been a long while since she’s felt hands grabbing at her waist and she wants to shove her fingers in his hair or stick her hands in his back pockets or pull him up the stairs so fast their feet trip on the steps.

“Bellamy,” he answers. “And no. I’m a bit crowded in here.”

“Should have picked a better seat then,” she says. “I was here first.”

Bellamy takes a wide, sweeping look at the room, too many bodies shoved into the space, then back at her, eyebrows raised. “I don’t see many other options, do you?”

“No.”

But she’s not looking for options, she’s staring only at him.

Then she leans forward, sets her near-empty solo cup on the table, and sinks back into the couch cushions again. She puts one hand on her knee and one on his, like it’s an accident, and lets both hands slide up. Stops mid-thigh. An accident. A shrug of the shoulders, and he’s watching her, corner of his mouth twitching like he wants to smile, because he thinks she is bold, or because he likes her, or because he likes her hand on his leg.

“Can I tell you something, Bellamy?”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t really want to be here.”

_I want to be on you, sitting on your lap, tilt your head back, kiss your neck—_

“Oh, right.” He nods, sage. “Not your scene, is it? You’re serious. Not into having fun.”

“I can be fun,” she insists. “This just isn’t my idea of it.”

He’s amused now, stretches out his arm and lets it fall over her shoulder, while in the corner the guitarist extends a screeching chord too long and then, into the silence that follows, as they sit still too close on the couch with the creaky springs, Bellamy leans in nose to nose and asks, “And what is?”

Nose touching nose. She takes her hand away, lets her fingers skim across his jaw instead. “Wouldn’t you like to know—?”


	79. Miller + Bellamy: Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "friend," requested by anonymous.
> 
> Written January 27, 2018.
> 
> Set in the same universe as Parts 34, 43, and 68.

They finish hauling the old floral monstrosity of a couch down the front steps and to the curb, but take a break before bringing Miller’s replacement couch, his real couch from his apartment, which has served him well for two years and will serve for at least a few more, up to its place. There’s nothing in the fridge but yesterday’s leftover Chinese and a couple bottles of water, so Miller tosses Bellamy one. Then he grabs one for himself, pulls out a chair and flings his weary body down, slumped, legs outstretched, arm slung over the back. He remembers it from when he was a kid: the back features a wide half-bow, a curved piece of wood that is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. He used to wonder if it would be possible to stick his head through at the top, or if he’d get stuck.

Bellamy drinks half the bottle in one go, then sighs, and tilts his head all the way back. It’s while he’s staring at the ceiling that Miller says, “You should move in.”

Bellamy laughs; he sounds weary and out of breath, but genuine. He buoys his head forward again. “Are you proposing to me, Nathan?”

This guy thinks he’s so funny, pulling out the first name and everything.

“No. I’m just saying.” He shrugs, like everything he’s saying should be obvious, right there in the rise and fall of his shoulders. “Your apartment is the size of a shoebox and it’s in a shit neighborhood, and you know it. I got plenty of room here. Do you know there are six bedrooms in this place? Six.” He takes a drink. Bellamy is still watching him, skeptical. “Grandma had five kids. Then when they grew up and moved out, she rented out the extra rooms to boarders.”

“You could rent them out to boarders,” Bellamy says.

Miller scoffs and tilts his chair back on two legs.

_Nathan! Don’t DO that! Four legs on the floor!_

“Look, I’m not going to give you the sales pitch, okay? But it’s a great offer and you know it. More space, rent-free, and you get to live with me.”

_The sap who’s too stupid to sell this place. More sentiment in that one decision than I thought I had in me._

Bellamy runs his fingers through the condensation on the outside of the bottle. An untrained eye would say he’s still thinking, but Miller knows better than that. “I guess you wouldn’t be a terrible housemate,” he says, after a while.

“I’m your best friend and you know it,” Miller shoots back, then tips his chair forward and launches himself to his feet. “If I weren’t, you wouldn’t have helped me move. Now come on. We still have more to do.”


	80. Jasper/Monty: Content

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 3, 2018.

It’s not about being happy, not exactly. That’s what Jasper would explain to Monty, if he only had the right words. (Maybe at some point in the next five years, he’ll find them. They’ve got plenty of time, after all. Time and not much else.)

It’s more that he just needs a reason to think that getting up, on any given day, is better than just staying still and waiting for—

What?

The end, he supposes, or if that’s already passed them by, then for whatever comes after the end.

He spends a lot of time in the bunker library, reading. He has become a voracious reader.

Now that they’re speaking again, or spending time in each other’s company again, since some days Jasper’s not really up for speaking much and Monty’s always known how to hold his silence too, it’s easier to find those grasping on points, because as a last resort, well, Monty’s one. _Hardest part_ , he thinks he might say sometime, _wasn’t even holding the gun, it was writing my goodbye to you_. But Monty doesn’t know about that attempt, the first one, or the first real serious one, or if he does he’s never mentioned it. So Jasper figures that at least as long as he’s still here he doesn’t have to deal with last words or anything like that.

And he may not be on the Earth anymore, the only proper place for a human being to live or to die, but at least he had some time there, before everyone jumped down beneath the surface and buried themselves (for _survival_ , right—so it’s not as crazy as it sounds). He has some good memories. What frost feels like melting beneath his fingertips, and the tint of winter sunlight, and the taste of rainwater on the tip of his tongue.

And he has this: quiet hours in his bed against the back wall in Dorm Room B, letting the strands of Monty’s hair slide through his fingers, over and over and over again. If all he can do is hang on to moments like these, small sensations like these, if at least he can still feel Monty breathing, and distract his distressed minds with thoughts like _what’s he thinking?_ and _should I speak?_ then that’s enough. He’s not happy. He won’t be happy until he reaches the Earth again and gives it one more good old try, at the very least, but. Sometimes he ekes out this: a feeling of almost-peace. What he can strive for at least is, in his best moments, the sense that despite everything, he has these times when he’s just about content.


	81. Jasper/Maya: Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 13, 2018.

The first night, shuffled off to some random room in Alpha, exhausted and dirty and his fingers aching from the way he armed himself, the whole walk back, he figures she will want to talk, but she does not.

She’s never seen his scar before. He’s never even told her about it, or about crossing the river, or about how her fortress was bounded by a river that defines it from the outside and now defines him. He thinks of the scar as disfiguring and ugly but she runs her fingertips like music notes down the center of his chest, right over it, and does not say a thing.

The room is a mess. People used to live in it, Alpha people, but they’re gone now. Came down in a different station or died—some other way—he won’t think about it. No one’s done up the place; no one thought about it.

Later, his head on her chest staring at the round silver valve embedded in her skin (skin sloughs off, skin gets left behind, joins with particles of dust, scars fade), she tugs her fingers through his hair, dull round pains, and says, _So this is a spaceship_ and somehow it’s funny. Jasper laughs. And he says _I guess so_. They called it a ship and of course it used to be in space, but it felt no more a spaceship than he felt an astronaut. _Science fiction_ , she says.

He turns his face in, nose against her collar bones, breathes in skin and sweat, his hand on her hip. And under the Mountain? He could ask but he already knows.

A horror. A horror without warning, a sneaking sensation of unease into his refuge, so now he knows for certain: that’s all there is. He kisses her neck and her shoulder and her arm and down to her hand, his hand holding the back of her hand, his lips pressing kisses to the palm of her hand. There. He’ll explain to her sometime that this part of the ship was never his, all those distinctions that used to matter but for now. For now. What the dead have abandoned, the living will take.


	82. Jasper + Monty: Basics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 14, 2018.

Monty thought that when they finally came to the surface again, Jasper would be the first one out, he who hated most the idea of living underground. But he’s standing at the back of the crowd when they pry open the doors. He looks up and around people’s heads but doesn’t strain to see. When they jumped down out of the dropship five, six years ago now, they stood at the back of the crowd too, Jasper bouncing on the balls of his feet, moving left and right trying to get a glimpse of green.

This time he stands with his hands in his pockets, leaning against the doorway as the others clamber out and over the rubble. Not a lot of green this time; mostly browns and greys and desert-dun. They pick their way across the ruins carefully, Jasper watching them and Monty, standing next to him, not touching him, watching him. Maybe, he tells himself, he’s just not ready to face the rest head on.

That night, having accomplished nothing, but with some clear air in their lungs and shivering with a feeling like shoving away cobwebs, a spring cleaning of the body, a reassessment of the feel of wind biting against skin, they come back inside. Back to their bunker beds one more time, back to something familiar. There’s a safety in the underground perhaps. A burrowing.

“I used to think so,” Jasper says, when Monty floats this idea aloud. A few years ago he would have smirked or laughed some hollow laugh but this time he’s quiet, and his face almost serene. He sits down on a flat, low rock, and leans against the broken-down side of an old building. It might be a building. Some oversized piece of debris.

“How long are you going to stay out here?” Monty asks and Jasper glances up. He takes a long moment to answer, as if he didn’t understand the question, didn’t understand why it needed to be asked.

“All night,” he says. “How long are you going to stay in there?” He tips his head back toward the bunker door.

“It’ll be freezing tonight,” Monty reminds him. “And there’s nothing here—”

Jasper shrugs. “All I need is the Earth.” He turns away again, settles with his shoulders back against the wall, his knees bent and his forearms stretched out and resting light on his knees. “That’s all people had at first, anyway. Didn’t you tell me this is about starting again?” He closes his eyes, just for a moment. Monty notices. “We’re going back to basics again.”


	83. Bellamy/Clarke: Guard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 19, 2018.

In Clarke’s experience, most of the Guard are okay. Wells did some basic training as a Cadet, before he transferred over to the judicial unit, so he knows most of them, and through him Clarke’s gotten to know them, too. They nod at her in the halls or make small talk if they’re stuck near medical on shift. Guardsman Blake is different, though. Definitely not one for small talk, he’s downright surly most of the time. He’ll tip his chin forward when she passes, but the gesture always reads like a drop of politeness heartily wrung from him, an obligation reluctantly fulfilled, and when she asks him about his day, he just tells her he’s on duty, and he can’t be making conversation now.

She supposes that’s technically true. But she knew the last Guard to take the afternoon medbay shift pretty well, so she’s used to the occasional casual exchange. It’s just a habit she’s not ready to break yet.

But he’s young, still got a roundness to his face like a Cadet, and new, and when Wells mentions that he’s from Factory, the last bit of the Blake puzzle slots into place. He’s got a lot to prove, then. His clipped tone and short answers are annoying but in a way she respects them too, respects him, because it’s no easy thing, to come from Factory and end up in the Guard.

She’d ask him about it, but she already knows that’s a no-go. He obviously hates Alpha Station patrol. Probably got into the Guard so he could improve things on his home station—but that’s reading a bit too much into the situation, isn’t it? Assuming too much?

 _You can be so sullen sometimes_ , a classmate told her once. _So stern. I just want to see you crack._

That’s how she feels about Guardsman Blake.

She’d like to take him home and watch him crack.


	84. Miller/Jackson: Warrior

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written March 31, 2018.

The ex is also former military, and Jackson has never felt more like a civilian than the first time they meet. Bryan’s in town to pick up some things he’s left in unofficial storage over at Miller’s, and somehow this leads to the three of them going out for a coffee together—either because Miller’s trying to seem cool and unbothered, or because he actually is cool and unbothered, Jackson can’t quite tell. He saves them a table by the window and watches Miller and Bryan standing at the counter, waiting for their drinks. Their backs are both so ramrod straight it’s like invisible strings are lifting their chins, and he sees it now. That at-attention stance. He’d never thought about it before. Miller doesn’t talk about the army much, and even less the time that he was almost married, or almost anything else about the past. They stick mostly the present: their jobs, their friends. Seeing him with Bryan seems to open up a whole new world of knowledge, new sides and angles of him that Jackson’s never noticed, never been privy to before. It’s like walking into a house of mirrors, his boyfriend reflected all around him in unexpected sizes and shapes.

He tells himself not to be unsettled. He tells himself to be cool about the whole thing. He has a past, too, of course. It’s just that the best part about being with Miller has always been his ability to keep Jackson clear and present in the now.

They arrive at the table with three large mugs balanced between them, and sit down, and they don’t seem as awkward as Jackson would be, if he were meeting up with the man he’d almost spent the rest of his life with. Also, they drink their coffee the same way, which is probably just a coincidence, but seems weird.

He tells himself he’s being paranoid as Bryan talks about his plans to move up to Maine, possibly, now that he’s left the service at last. He and Miller have a lot to say about people they used to know, inside jokes, old trips, and also about gardens and growing things—topics that seem delicate at first, until Jackson realizes their hidden sturdiness. He mostly stays silent, himself. But at one point, his hand left sitting out on the table top, just sitting, he feels Miller’s hand press down on top of his and he looks up, catches his eye, catches him smiling, and reminds himself it’s going to be all right.


	85. Jasper: Frog Sounds Pt. 5 (Arrival)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 1, 2018.
> 
> Previous parts: Chapters 35, 36, 49, and 52.

Jasper swings the car right and into the driveway. It bumps down along the uneven gravel, until he finally settles into a clear spot off to the left. He cuts the engine, glances at Maya, staring at him wide-eyed and uncertain in the dark, and then over his shoulder into the backseat. Monty is sitting up, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand.

They unbuckle their seat belts, open the doors, and step out. Close the doors after them—four uneven slams disturbing the cool quiet, blanking out the bug noises, the quiet chirping of crickets. The air smells of nighttime and spring, clear and fresh, of grass and trees and leaves and dirt. Jasper catches Maya with one hand still on the door handle, her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly back.

He pops open the trunk and they grab their bags. There’s a light on in the kitchen, and as they shuffle past the other cars and to the back door, Jasper can hear movement on the other side: their hosts, preparing to greet them. They don’t even have a chance to knock; already as they squash in together by the outer door, the inner one is being dragged open with an audible crack and huff, a reluctance like wood that has expanded out with summer heat. The sounds are much too loud for the quiet, sounds to compete with the shifting of their weight on their feet, Raven yawning, Monty hiking his bag up on his shoulder, Jasper rolling a stray stone beneath his sneaker toe.

He hears all of this, and none of it. He’s breathing deep of the clear cool dark of the air, he’s wondering if he’s lost or if he’s home.

Then Clarke opens the door and grins wide at them, and ushers them in.


	86. Jasper + Clarke: Human Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 5, 2018.
> 
> For part two, see chapter 88.
> 
> cw for slight suicidal ideation

Monty told him once—screamed it out at him, one of those times when he was so angry, he worked himself right up into being observant—that he was treating himself like a human sacrifice. What he meant was trying to kill himself but he made it sound noble, almost. A sacrifice to some purpose, to some higher power, to some greater good.

The phrase might be better applied to Clarke, if Jasper’s right about what’s going on in her head. Or what was going on in it, when she walked away from Camp Jaha without ever looking back.

She’s sneaking in now around the perimeter of Arkadia, skulking around looking for a knothole in, away from the prying eyes of the night shift Guards. Jasper is the one to let her in at last. She seems shocked to see him, but he only puts his finger to lips to remind her to keep silent, waves her in, and closes his makeshift gate behind her. This late at night, almost everyone else is asleep. High wind waves through the upper branches of the trees beyond their settlement. Heavy bootsoles thump somewhere off in the shadows.

“You’re not Farm Station,” Jasper whispers, and Clarke’s brow wrinkles deep. With this expression on her face, she looks young, and almost innocent.

Then she reaches out her hand and runs her palm along the top of his head. “You cut your hair.”

He tugs at the end of a matted red clump of hers. “You dyed yours.”

She stares at her hair lying in the palm of his hand (they are standing very close and their voices are soft; she smells of woods and dirt and her own body, herself left to herself for weeks, her loneliness), as if this were a revelation.

“Engineering rigged us some showers,” he adds, letting go, sticking his hands in his pockets again.

“Are you saying I smell?”

He smiles. The muscles in his face strain, almost hurt. He kicks at a loose pebble and sends it flying out past her and toward the wall. “I’m trying here.”

“No, you’re right.” When she breathes in, slow and deep, he hears the air rattling through her lungs. He hears every tremble in that breath. And he wonders for the first time why she’s here, why she’s home. “I… I don’t have any ration points.”

Jasper flicks his eyes up. “How’d you know we’re rationing?”

Clarke tilts her head. “How could you not be?”

He takes his hands from his pockets and lets his shoulders slump back down. It’s a little bit sickening, how she still knows them so well, reads everything about them from the wall and the trash-heap buildings and the curve of the Alpha Station arch, looming behind them. How she knows them so well it’s as if she never even left. In his gut that’s what it feels like, like she was never gone at all.


	87. Jasper + Clarke: Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 10, 2018.
> 
> For previous part, see chapter 87.

A hole opens up in the scrap metal wall, and a boy helps her climb through. At first, Clarke doesn’t recognize him. But though she’s changed just as much, maybe more, Jasper stares back at her without a hint of confusion. No judgment either, and no surprise, and no scorn.

She watches the moonlight strike the gaunt planes and hollows of his face, runs her hand over his buzzed-short hair. The sharp angles of his elbows and knees make her think of tree branches snapping and rustling in hollow midnight winds. When he motions for her to follow him to the showers, he reaches out and for a moment, she thinks he’s about to take her hand, as if she were a child. How odd that would be, she thinks. And how strange, too, that she walks along well-trodden soil, and feels so dizzy, as if the world were tilting beneath her feet.

It’s much easier to evade rationing when the showers are outside, when so much of life exists outside, when every resource are no longer hidden behind a thumbprint activated door. “It’s half honor code, now,” Jasper says, rubbing at the back of his neck, as he scans out across the outbuildings, looking for Guards. “And the surveillance state.” He’s keeping his back politely to her, though if he turned he’d see no more than her bare shoulders behind the shower curtain, her scraggly red hair, and her filthy face.

The pipes screech as she turns the water on. A slow screech, melting into a high-pitched whine: can everyone in Camp Jaha hear it? What a homecoming that would be, caught naked in the showers in the middle of the night, stealing water from some people who used to be her people, once not too long ago.

Clarke has not had a shower since she came to Earth. No—she did, once, in Mount Weather. That was all. The spray of water droplets hard and lukewarm against her skin is surreal; she feels herself doubling; she feels herself, or the mask that’s come to take the place of herself, washing away, and another self, a stranger self, sliding into its place. She knows she should hurry. It’s not right to waste resources. It’s not right to ask Jasper to risk guarding her for too long. But oh, if she waits long enough, she might come to recognize this new self, she might even find that it is her old self, she might be healed.


	88. Miller/Jackson: Staying Over Pt. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 25, 2018.
> 
> Previous parts: chapters 34, 43, and 68.

Miller isn’t going to sneak around his own house like he’s a teenager, or worse, like he’s done something wrong. Still, he finds himself poking his head out into the hall before he steps out of his room, then leaning down the stairwell carefully, trying to discern the source of the sounds floating up from downstairs. Kitchen. He’s pretty sure the voices are coming from the kitchen.

Which is great.

There’s no way to get to the front door without walking past the doorway to that particular room, so unless he wants to nudge Jackson out the back door (he does not), they’ll have to pass casually by on their way to the front hall. He hopes at least it’s just Bellamy and maybe Monty in there: people who might notice Miller’s guest but won’t say anything about it, people who keep their own cards close to the vest.

The stairs creak on their way down, but the conversation doesn’t falter, even though, as he notes out of the corner of his eye, it’s Murphy and Jasper and Monty having breakfast, Bellamy nowhere to be found.

Jackson pauses just inside the front door, his hand on the doorknob. No, Miller thinks, it’s not weird that he spent the night, it’s not weird that he woke to Jackson’s morning breath and bleary eyes, but this part is, just a little. Just a little awkward.

“So I’ll see you,” Jackson says.

“Yeah. Soon.”

They both lean in but not quite at the same time, and then, each thinking he has missed, they pull back again, and look away, and Jackson’s hand tightens around the doorknob.

“I’ll call you,” Miller says, and pulls him in by the lapels of his jacket for a quick but proper, a decided, kiss. This one lingers too and for the first time a small tendril of worry unfurls in him, that maybe he’s in a little deeper than he’s yet been able to admit.

After Jackson leaves and the door closes behind him, he stands leaning against it and listening to the chatter from the kitchen, trying to decide if it seems forced or if he’s paranoid, rolling his eyes at his own thoughts.

Murphy is making pancakes and Monty has his nose buried in a magazine; Jasper’s legs are propped up on Monty’s lap and he’s drinking coffee turned dun-colored with an excess of milk. He’s telling a story about one of their old neighbors, his and Murphy’s from when they both lived over on Mayfield, but when Miller shows up in the doorway, he cuts himself off, looks up, leans back and raises his eyebrows.

Murphy flips over a pancake, then points his spatula at Miller. “Who was that?”

Monty, at least, doesn’t even look up.


	89. Miller/Bryan: First Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 26, 2018
> 
> Part of the oh well verse.

Miller is not _thiiiis_ close to failing English because he’s bad at it (he’s not) or because he dislikes it (he doesn’t), but because his teacher has a screw or two coming loose and also—this is the main thing—she basically hates him. She hates his interpretation of Milton and she hates his disdain for nineteenth century English poetry and she hates the way he reads Banquo when they tackle _Macbeth_ out loud at the end of a sleepy Monday morning class. She especially hates that he’s always the first person to remind her that their papers are due next Monday, not today, or the test is next week, not this, but hey, someone has to. But now he’s staring down the barrel of a big fat F, so desperate times, and all that stuff.

She may be losing marbles all over the place, but his English teacher does have one redeeming quality: she offers extra credit to kids who volunteer to work on the play, so volunteer he does. He’s not so sure about the acting part (not that she’d give him a role even if he tried out), but he can be part of the stage crew. Sure. That’s just moving stuff around, pretty much, right? He can do that.

Somehow Clarke Griffin—a freshman, but he knows her name because she’s single handedly taken over the entirety of set design—corrals him into painting sets because “it doesn’t look like you’re doing much else anyway,” and that’s how he ends up dripping white paint on his shoes while accidentally staring at a boy. He doesn’t know the boy, which means he’s either new or a freshman or both. He’s standing over by the curtains, talking to some other kid holding a clipboard, and he’s smiling this wide straight-toothed grin like he’s the sort of boy-next-door who should be living behind the picket fence Miller should definitely be painting right now. He has a great laugh too. And it’s weird because Miller never thought the clean-cut thing would do it for him, but then the boy leans in, like he’s sharing some gossip or telling a secret or a dirty joke, and he looks a little less clean, and it’s even better.

He says something else, Miller doesn’t hear what, claps the other kid on the shoulder, then leans down to pick up the backpack he’s left lying by his feet. He slings it over his shoulder, then heads off across the stage and jumps down, skipping the steps entirely, and as he does, Miller catches sight of a prominent rainbow flag pin on his bag. It could be a coincidence, but this is the twenty-first century so—probably not. _Great new_ s, he thinks to himself, _he’s gay too_ , but the _too_ still feels weird even to think just to himself, so he just shakes his head, forces the thought away, and gets back to painting the fence.


	90. Bellamy/Gina: Real, Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written April 27, 2018.

For the first two weeks, Bellamy exists at Camp Jaha, but he does not live. He works, he makes himself useful, and he sleeps, sometimes—in fits. When he wakes and cannot fall asleep again, he gets up and wanders outside, past the Guards on night watch, watching them as they watch him, and in his uncertain near-delirious state he loses track of who they really are and wonders if this is the haunting, begun.

He avoids people as much as possible.

Sometimes he and Monty eat together, and he’s always slipping in at Kane’s elbow asking for more things to do—he could haul trash, stand watch, build something, organize something, do something, anything—but the rest of them, he doesn’t know how to face. He cannot leave them, and cannot face them, and he cannot stand the feel of his own skin. Yet somehow he continues living, each day and the next day, despite the sick waves of nausea in his gut. What he has done. What sort of person, he asks himself sometimes, destroys with such imprecision? How powerful and how monstrous must a person be to lay such waste to a whole world?

That, he supposes, must be what the others are thinking, which is why he sticks to Monty, who understands, who grits his teeth through it all, and Kane, who is so busy and so harried he has no time and no patience for judgment, and why he avoids the rest, who perhaps are frightened of him, who frighten him.

One evening he’s sifting through construction plans, sitting at a table in a former Alpha common room, surrounded by junk, when she walks in. He does not notice her. She puts her hand on his shoulder and he startles, and bats her hand harshly aside.

His heart’s racing and his lungs burn with air improperly breathed—a shot of adrenaline lighting up his whole body like a fucking solar flare. An attack within himself, a heart attack. He looks up at her wide-eyed, and she stares back at him, wide-eyed; she looks more startled than frightened, and as she stands there immobile and patient and quiet, he comes to remember her face and her name. Her round soft face and her ringlet curls.

Gina.

They had a few classes together, as teenagers up on the Ark. He hasn’t seen her in a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he says, only after a long moment has passed. He has not spoken to anyone yet today and his voice is scratchy, cracking up in his throat. He puts his hands on his knees as if he were directing the movement of machine parts, because his body does not feel organic and real, it feels like someone else’s body and he’s in it by chance and he’s ruining it.

“I guess I must have startled you,” she says, and smiles, so gentle and forgiving it hurts this other-body of his, and he has to blink twice, fast, and look away at the space of gray wall beyond her shoulder.

“That’s no excuse,” he answers. And “I’m sorry,” again.


	91. Bellamy/Gina: Real, Pt. 1 (take 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written May 10, 2018.
> 
> A rewrite of chapter 90.

Bellamy returns to Camp Jaha, in body. His spirit perhaps he burned away in the funeral pyre, two hundred bodies strong, at the site of their historic desecration, before they came on trudging home. Or maybe it fled into the woods with Clarke. Maybe it’s lying dormant still within him, but if so he does not feel it; he lives now in his muscles and his bones. Scavenging. Building. Patrolling. Following orders. _We’re back now_ , Kane told him once, _no need to worry_ , and he doesn’t, because feelings like that, worry, guilt, are distant like the glare of the pale early winter sun when he holds his hand up above his eyes and it splinters through his fingers.

To say he wanders like a ghost in this life is unfair to the real ghosts. He is a killer, not one of the dead.

Sometimes he eats dinners with Monty, whose brow furrows like he’s got the same weights hooked into his skin, dragging him down. They don’t talk about it. Though Bellamy would like to ask him, _do you feel those staring eyes too? do you feel your shell self flipped inside out and raw and you’re amazed at the gross purple rotting loneliness of your own insides, the things you’ve done, the person you are now?_ He doesn’t. That’s not right either because he is not flipped outside in. That would be an excruciating pain and he feels no pain.

What he feels is like he’s living his life next to a large pane of reflective glass. He can see himself in the glass. But the self in the glass only mimics what his real self does, only bounces back the images of actions, and as it does scrubs them of interiority, glares out the outlines and no more. He stares long and hard at the glass because it is all he understands.

He walked through the gates because he owed them, the survivors, the Forty-Two, the dropship kids, his return, but he has not returned. He hears that now, understands it in the dark. Stands outside Alpha with his feet cracking open the frost-crusted dirt and watches the Guardsmen on patrol, the black shadow figures of his childhood now set against a sharp background of clear-cool Earth sky, and he hears himself his own echo, his own emptiness. Something returned. A body returned. Not a monster, not a survivor, but a reflection of a person, or a shadow.

He does not want to come into contact with the rest of himself again. With the press of his palm, hardly any effort at all, he laid waste to a world, a musty civilization beneath the stone: strewn human bodies beneath their hanging flags, skin cracked and scarred and red. What amazing power. What gnarled, tremendous, terrifying power. He flexes his hand again. No, it does not live in him. He is not magic. But the will, the will to destroy, it has been there always, the fetid underbelly of the will to protect and to save. He cannot bear it. He shudders and above him, a low roll of thunder like the revolt of the Earth rumbles through.


	92. Jasper/Monty: Flower Shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written on May 28, 2018.
> 
> For jasprjordamn on tumblr.

Monty starts working part time at his parents’ flower shop not long after he turns fourteen. He’s terrible at coming up with arrangements, but good at growing things, and he can work a cash register and answer simple questions, so he’s basically got the necessary skills. And it’s not a bad place to hang out in his spare time, anyway: the air is always warm and smells like leaves and stems and wildflowers, greenery and dirt, and no matter how often they sweep, there are always stray petals and leaves dotting the floor. Jasper comes over most afternoons and they do their homework behind the counter in between customers. Jasper makes up facts about the flowers and tries out his straight face on unsuspecting nervous kids getting ready for first dates, or high-strung brides peaked with wedding-planning fever.

 _Red, you might know, is the color of love,_ he tells some jumpy kid right before prom. _Did you also know it’s the color of curiosity?_ Or, to the patient woman planning a dinner party: _the ancient Phoenicians believed yellow roses brought rain. You should definitely buy some. Save us from this drought!_

On especially slow days, Monty tilts his chair all the way back and watches Jasper play around with his own versions of arrangements. “You’ll never be a florist,” Monty tells him, as Jasper sticks a sprig of delicate white flowers at the edge of some lopsided new creation.

“But it has charm,” Jasper finishes, and shoots him a smile.

Monty inclines his head. It does. Its own sort of charm. Like Jasper himself.

They’ve been planning for a few weeks now how to bust their own way into prom, even though they’re only freshmen, but more for the sake of conversation than because they really will. The shop has been overrun for days now with juniors and seniors from every local school, including their own, looking for corsages and boutonnieres and occasionally for actual bouquets, and after a trio of very excited and vaguely familiar girls deep in conversation about the infinite shades of the lavender spectrum finally pick out their colors and leave, Monty says, “Prom is going to be worse than homecoming,” and Jasper rolls his eyes.

They didn’t have to sneak into homecoming, which decreased the fun quotient considerably.

“We should probably focus our efforts on after-parties anyway,” Jasper agrees. He’s sifting through a large vase of lilacs, and just as Monty opens his mouth to speak, Jasper plucks one out and circles back behind the counter again. He holds out the flower, looks almost shy. It smells like the street they used to live on, back when they were little kids and still neighbors, smells just exactly like walking down the street past Mrs. Jackson’s overgrown lilac bush in the early starburst weeks of spring, on his way to Jasper’s, the flowers reaching out to him as he strode by.

“Be my date?” Jasper asks.

Monty laughs—"To what?“—but reaches out for the flower anyway. His fingers brush up against Jasper’s, and he doesn’t pull away.

"To whatever we decide to do the night of prom.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course I’ll be spending it with you.”


	93. Miller/Bryan: The Movies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written May 31, 2018.
> 
> Part of the oh well verse.

For their first date, they go to the movies, because it just seems like the obvious choice. Also, because, as Murphy explained, “Movies are the best because they’re dark, you can sit there and not talk for two hours, and afterward, you have something to make conversation about. And it’s easier to make a move if you’re thinking about that.”

(Miller’s never known Murphy to actually date, and he’s also a bit weird when he gets a little drunk and a little philosophical, so Miller takes this advice with the usual salt grain. Then he looks to Bellamy, whose advice he absolutely does trust, but who just gives a lazy sort of shrug. After a long moment, he adds, “Safe, traditional choice.”)

So the movies it is. He meets up with Bryan beneath the marquee, gets there first and then watches him approaching from down the street, hands in his pockets, looking off to the right and making it so easy, too easy, for Miller just to watch him and take him all in—his sneakers, his shoulders, the fall-windswept mess of his hair—to memorize him. He doesn’t seem nervous at all when they finally meet up by the ticket booth, just smiles and reaches out and grabs on to his arm briefly, midway between the shoulder and the elbow, like they’re friends, or like they know each other better than they do. “Hey,” he says, and Miller echoes a “Hey” back with a smile of his own.

They get tickets to an action-adventure thing, which isn’t the most romantic of choices but fuck, it’s the only thing playing that’s even vaguely worth seeing, and they agree readily on it. They share a large tub of popcorn (bad idea, except for the part where their hands are always bumping into each other), which is gone within twenty minutes (the movie’s barely started by then, because of all the inane trailers—they got there stupid-early and had to sit through every single one, heads bowed toward each other, whispering about how each one looks exactly the same as the last, until the guy in front shushes them). Then for the rest of the film, Miller’s hand sits on the arm rest they share and bumps up against the side of Bryan’s hand. The movie’s not about plot, just about cool explosions and extended chase sequences, so he has a lot of time to think about the presence of skin against his skin. Bryan gets super into the special effects and the fighting, and Miller likes a good choreographed action sequence too, but not as much as he likes spying Bryan’s excited grin out of the corner of his eye.

Later, they take a walk around downtown, compare opinions on the relative badassery of the movie’s main heroes, almost hold hands. It feels easy and comfortable but also a little bit like being out with one of the guys. But also not. Because he’s never been attracted like this to any of his friends (except Bellamy, for a hot minute, but that’s another thing), and every now and then he and Bryan glance at each other in just the right way and at just the right time, and something sparks. Like a cliché in the sort of romantic comedy he would definitely not have been able to sit through.

The streetlights and the inviting glow from the buildings they pass give more than enough light to see by, but it’s hard to avoid the truth: that autumn has crept up on them, that it’s October now, that the sun sets earlier than it did, it seems, just a day or two ago, and with the full night-dark, an unexpectedly deep chill settles in. They’ve made a wide circuit, and stop at the end of the same street where they started. The cinema marquee still shines in the distance. Miller hesitates. He’s not sure what to do now, so he just shrugs, and offers to drive Bryan home.


	94. Jasper/Monty: Post S3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 10, 2018

Monty isn’t sure, but he suspects that Jasper tried to kill himself the night he left the City of Light. The way he walked out the door, still limping, the way he insisted he needed to be by himself: Monty watched him and a hollow, steel voice deep inside told him _He’s not coming back. You’re never going to see him again._

He pushed it aside because it was one of those rare hollow-hearted truths that he just couldn’t bear.

More than once, he’s come close to bringing it up. The closest was the morning he found the note addressed to him. Just one of those things he wasn’t meant to find. Jasper told him he had wire clippers somewhere in his desk and Monty had been looking and instead–

He’d slid the tip of his finger along the envelope edge, like he might open it. Then he stuffed it back in the drawer where he’d found it. The worst of it was that Jasper hadn’t thrown it away. Like he thought that he might still need it.

Some days Monty still feels like he’s playing this babysitter role, watching out for signals and clues, like he always has to be on: can’t miss a moment when Jasper might start to withdraw again, might start to drink too much again, might play fast and loose with his own body again. It is exhausting. He sinks down into his side of their narrow bed at night and watches Jasper’s shoulders and his chest rise and fall with sleep and he thinks _at least he’s still here_ , and then after that a shock of desire so strong it almost scares him: the desire to protect him, always.

Would Jasper ever accept being seen as such a fragile thing?

He’s getting thinner as he gets older; he never really gained back the weight after Mount Weather. And he still has that scar on his chest.

Monty turns over on his back.

He still has his scar on his hip. Someday it will fade maybe, no more than a ghostly pale line in his flesh. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and he doesn’t remember when it did; he’s thrown away the memory of the pain. 

He lets his hand rest over Jasper’s hip. Here in the middle of Alpha Station, no Guards patrolling indoors anymore, it is quiet, not a single sound on their grounded ship, and nothing to distract him as he stares up at the ceiling and waits for sleep to come.


	95. Jasper/Monty: S3 Fix It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 11, 2018
> 
> For alphonses-posts on tumblr.

Fighting seems stupid when the world’s about to end, and yet, what else can he do? Accept Jasper’s goodbyes on their face, just let him go? No; he’ll get into screaming matches instead, fights as if they were still children, fights like walking up to a solid brick wall over and over, again and again. Words that shoot right past each other. _I don’t understand_ piled on top of _I don’t know_ and _I can’t, I can’t._

 _I just want to be happy before I go_ , Jasper tells him, and Monty sits down, hard, on the bed, feels its creaky old springs sag beneath him, and digs the heels of his hands against the sockets of his eyes. _I don’t want to waste any more TIME—_

He could scream.

“But do you want to _die_?”

He throws his hands down in his lap, as if they were hot coals. The soft and vulnerable rounds of his eyes hurt in his head, and Jasper is staring at him with his mouth open like he’s not sure what to say.

“Just tell me. Do you want to—”

“We’re all going to—”

Monty shakes his head. He stands up and he takes Jasper’s hands in his and he holds the balled fists of them as tight as he can. It’s hard, it’s like holding hands with a stone. Jasper swallows hard. The rest of his words seem stuck there in his throat. Monty would like to kiss him right there, at the jump of his pulse.

“What if we don’t? That’s all I’m asking. You don’t have to believe there’s a way, but if there is, will you take it? If it just…appears in front of you—?”

_And it will, it will, it will. I’ll create it. I’ll make it with my own two hands. I’ll catch you, I’ll fix it, I will._

Jasper shakes his head, a short robotic jerk. His voice is very quiet. “I just don’t want to waste any more _time_.”

Monty sets his palms to either side of Jasper’s face, frames his thin, familiar face. He understands, he supposes, a bit about wasting time. Deep down, he’s scared too, and he’s tired of it, too.

So he leans in and kisses Jasper on the mouth, not expecting he will kiss back. Not really needing him to. And he doesn’t, only stares at Monty with the slightest furrow tilting down between his eyes.

“Is this some sort of bribe?” he asks, and Monty laughs. The sound is full and round and real. He could almost cry. He wants to hold Jasper close but it’s Jasper’s arms that wrap around him, and somehow, he’s still laughing, even though his lungs ache now and it hurts. He thinks from the way Jasper’s shoulders are shaking with hitched breath that he might be laughing too.

Later, Jasper admits: “I don’t,” and though Monty knows what he means, he adds, “I don’t really want to die.”

And later still, they take a blanket out to the observatory deck and watch the sunrise. It’s something kinda like watching the starlight from the starboard window bay, but better: everything here is so close and so real. They can could almost touch it, almost taste it.

“The world farewell tour,” Jasper says. Their legs are touching and their bent knees bump and Jasper’s got Monty’s fingers threaded through his own.

“Maybe,” Monty corrects.

Jasper shrugs. “I’ll help you with the ship,” he says. His voice is perfectly even, and he’s watching the sky. “But you have to watch some sunrises with me.”

Monty squeezes his hand tight and answers, “It’s a deal.”


	96. Raven/Gina: Adornment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written June 26, 2018.
> 
> Part of the oh well verse.

“I just don’t want to look stupid, that’s all,” Gina says, as she adjusts the top of a strapless, sleeveless, red homecoming dress. She tilts her head, examining herself in the mirror with a critical eye.

Raven rolls her own eyes and scoffs. “How do you get ‘I look stupid’ from this?” She gestures to the mirror, Gina’s reflection looking beautiful even with her hair up in a messy bun, no makeup and no jewelry and her face contorted in a not-so-pretty grimace.

“Because the top keeps falling down and it has these stupid flowers everywhere,” Gina answers. She pokes at one drooping fake rose, and it perks up beneath her finger, then immediately sags down again. “I feel…overly adorned.”

“Okay,” Raven agrees, slowly, still skeptical. “So you don’t have to get this dress. It’s a great color on you, though. You should look for something similar.”

“It’s not too red?”

Raven doesn’t even know what 'too red’ means. Is that a thing, too red? Doesn’t matter if it is: she’s at some crowded little dress shop in a strip mall in the restaurant district and it’s the third one they’ve gone to today and she’s starting to feel overwhelmed with the sheer amount of fabric she’s sifted through over the last two hours–dresses aren’t really, at the end of the day, particularly her thing–but she’s with her friends and she’s with Gina, and Gina is going to be her date, and that’s still enough to buoy her up. And Gina, her date, could wear a pair of ripped jeans and an old-shirt, a Halloween costume, a big old paper bag, and still be the only person Raven would want on her arm when she walks into a gym decorated with balloons and crepe paper and too loud with music and maybe, if the council goes all out, featuring some glittering lights. Fucking homecoming. She’s giddy.

“It’s not too red,” she answers, and tries to stay cool. “But really, Gina, you could wear anything here. You’re too hard on yourself.”

Gina shrugs but doesn’t argue. “I know I’m being silly,” she says to the mirror, pulling the top up again though it hasn’t slipped an inch. “I just want, you know, to look nice.”

She drops her hands to her sides again and Raven reaches out and takes one, gives it a squeeze. “And you will,” she promises. “There’s no doubt that you will.”


	97. Miller/Jackson: Staying Over Pt. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written July 11, 2018.
> 
> Previous parts: chapters 34, 43, 68, and 88.

Miller ignores the question— _who was that?_ what kind of question is that? why does it matter? this is his house, technically, he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone—that’s how he runs through his defenses in his head—and instead sits down at the table and gestures back toward the stove. “Are those for anyone or…?”

Murphy flips another pancake over, then lifts it up beneath his spatula and slides it onto a plate. He adds a second and then it passes it over Miller’s head, holding it above him so he has to reach up and grab it. It’s a bit of a jerk gesture but at the core of it is the offer of a free no-effort breakfast, which is what’s really important, so Miller says, “Thanks,” and takes the fork Murphy is dangling in front of his nose.

“He’s the new boyfriend,” Monty says, then, and flips another page in his magazine.

Miller passes his hand over his face, slowly, so he can pretend for as many seconds as possible that he is not in this room and this bit of dropped almost-conversation has not been resurrected by the most unlikely source. He has been sorely betrayed.

“Obviously,” Monty adds, belatedly.

Jasper leans back in his chair, dropping his feet down to the floor again for balance, barely curls his fingers around the edge of the refrigerator door behind him, and yanks it open. There’s syrup on the door, and somehow he grabs for it unerringly without even having to look. He sets it on the table and lets the fridge door swing shut again. “So, when are we going to meet him?”

“Never,” Miller answers, without thinking, then winces: the kiss, the last kiss by the door, decided and definite, a proper square kiss before leaving, plays over in his mind again. Murphy raises an eyebrow as he sets another plate of pancakes down. Miller rubs at the space between his eyebrows with his forefingers and his thumb. “I mean, he’s not my boyfriend, so there’s no meeting-the-friends thing scheduled, okay?”

Murphy sets a handful of forks down on the table, brings over two more plates, and sits down. Monty grabs for one of the forks. Then he glances up over the top of his magazine, goes for the syrup instead and says, “Then you should do a better job of sneaking him out of the house next time.”

“Yeah,” Jasper agrees. “If you went out the back door we might not have noticed.”

Miller groans, a low irritated scratching at the back of his throat. “I’m not sneaking anyone out of my own—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Murphy interrupts. He’s checking the expiration date on the back of the bottle of syrup, as if this greatly interested him, as if the conversation did not. “We would have noticed anyway.”


	98. Bellamy/Clarke: Halloween Hookup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written August 3, 2018.
> 
> A missing scene from my fic "Wild Draw Four."

Eventually made it up to his room, through deserted hallways, tripping over her long fairy godmother skirts on the stairs with the fabric bunched up in her hand as she wished her other hand was holding his, and how simple that would be. She stood next to him outside his door, twirling her fairy wand around between her fingers while he fumbled with his keys, like he was nervous, and she felt nervous too. Felt like she’d left her body and come to inhabit another’s, too aware of the chasm between herself, her real self, and whoever this body is, standing with Bellamy outside his room while his key slides into his lock and the bolts unbolt with silver metallic shifting sounds, Bellamy her friend, Bellamy who kissed her when she so wanted to be kissed, to kiss, and did not know if she could.

Maybe this is all in the spirit of Halloween.

He flicks on the lights and she takes off her shoes, first thing, before she even sets down her wand. Even finding her feet beneath the skirts is a trial. He’s watching her with the slightest of smiles on his lips, over his shoulder, as he closes the door again and locks it behind them.

There at the dance breathing around her hesitation, wondering if she could form action from inchoate want, wondering if the moment was building up as she so hoped and believed that it was, and hating her own lack of resolve, she had somehow been both perfectly aware what has happening, and completely caught off guard, too, when his lips met hers. There and gone in a second, like a game of kissing tag. Then he’d look at her like he was about to run away. She grabbed his arms and held him back.

Now she grabs his arm again to steady herself as she takes off the second shoe, kicking it across the room and under his bed. They watch it slide away. Then Bellamy shrugs and Clarke has to laugh: they’re being silly, giddy and silly and reckless and it’s Halloween, and maybe this is a costume, but they each wear it so well.


	99. Jasper/Monty: Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written August 18, 2018.
> 
> For alphonses-posts on tumblr.

Their little cabin isn’t much—

Not like some of the houses they’ve seen on their travels. Sometimes they borrow the Rover and pack supplies for a few days, then drive out to the ends of their known universe. They want to reform the borders of the map. When they’re not quite sure where they are anymore, they drop down to the ground again and go on foot, just to see what they can find. It’s okay if they get lost. That’s what the Earth is about: getting lost.

They’ve found abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere, random shelters that survived while their neighbors were ripped from their foundations, and other times whole divisions that kept their form while the humans inside them fled or perished, and once a whole town, every step on the crumbled old sidewalks making their chests hollow out and ache. Why are some structure still standing when so many others fell? they ask themselves. Why did some people survive while so many—?

“I guess we’re the lucky ones,” Monty says as they crunch over old broken glass, pick apart old pieces of furniture that want to crumble at the touch. He’s waiting for Jasper to agree, but Jasper just hums.

“People lived here,” he says, after a while. He sits down on the floor and leans back against a large, overstuffed chair, dirty with debris. “I’ve always wanted to live in a place like this. I mean—not destroyed.” He smiles. “But built into the ground. I guess I never knew entirely what to picture…”

What did Earth houses look like? Were they square or rectangular or round? Tall? Long? Narrow? Did people live all together like on the stations, or in separate family homes?

They could have looked it up in the Ark library, but it was more fun to ask each other questions and imagine. A million Earths existed then. Each one was their inheritance.

“We could have a house like this,” Monty tells him, “someday,” and puts his hand on Jasper’s knee. “But nicer.”

“New,” Jasper says, and Monty nods, slowly.

Their cabin is new. They helped to build it with their own hands. One room with two windows that look out the front at the little growing settlement, and one that looks out the back, at the trees. They sleep beneath the window guarded by evergreens. They talk about what they’ve seen and what they’ll put in the little cabin someday.

It’s nothing much.

Maybe a big chair, red like the one with the stuffing leaking out of it, but the color new and bright and not muddied by a century’s worth of dust. A big table like the one where that family used to eat, underneath the pictures of themselves. A proper bed with a big thick striped blanket on top, like Monty’s striped blanket on Farm, but wide enough for two.

Furniture and objects they’ll make themselves out of the Earth.

Now that they’re home.


	100. Jasper + Monty: Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 13, 2018.
> 
> Part of the autumn verse.

It’s Jasper who’s stuck in the in-between: evenings out in the graveyard, listening for voices in the strange September winds. But he doesn’t see it. Monty tries to explain as they stand by the wrought-iron gates and the breeze picks up and ruffles through their hair, and the leaves skitter across the packed earthen trail. Tries to explain how he’s not sure if he believes or not, or what believing means; how he’s trapped between waking and sleeping, understanding and confusion, until Jasper puts his hands on Monty’s shoulders.

“You do understand. You understand everything better than anyone I know.” He stares without blinking, a challenge.

“Not this sort of thing,” Monty answers, quietly, and his words are all but lost in the wild sweep of unexpected wind. It chills down to his bones worse than September winds should.

“You were there at Raven’s when she first—that was her. She’s real.”

“This is a story. You’ve heard enough of them, you know—”

Jasper shakes his head and Monty’s words cut themselves short. He can feel Jasper’s fingers digging hard into his shoulders, hard enough to hurt, and his lungs ache when he breathes in too deep. The graveyard is behind him, filled with people who used to be, and what Jasper is suggesting, that being dead is not the same as not being at all, rattles him too deeply, hurts too much.

This is what he means by frozen, stuck: between believing and not, between the safety of hard-set, hard-won knowledge and the fear of those whispered words he can make out, some nights, too, when the autumn deepens, when part of the city goes to sleep and another part wakes up.

“I used to be so afraid,” Jasper whispers. “When it first happened, you don’t even know, I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t put it into words.”

“But you’re not afraid now?”

He shakes his head. “I trust her more than some other people I know, around here. I think she’s more real than some of them are.”

Monty doesn’t understand at all what he’s saying, except for the part of him that does. He takes Jasper’s hands off his shoulders, pries them loose and holds them tight in his hands. The gate creaks behind him, wanting to slam shut, wanting to open, and he doesn’t want to listen, but he has to, he can’t help it, and he does.


	101. Octavia/Raven: Needle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written September 15, 2018.
> 
> In the same universe as Chapter 67 (Raven/Octavia, Bedtime).

This winter will be harder than the last, and they are not prepared. While Bellamy leads hunting parties and Clarke gathers extra supplies of medicinal herbs, Octavia takes out her needle and thread. She has not sewn in a long time. Never before on Earth. At first, she sits cross-legged on top of their bedspread and pretends she does not know how to begin, even though the knowledge has never left her, and it floats up to the surface with a disquieting ease.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Raven says, that night, as she puts her leg up on the bed and leans back in her chair. She says this as if Octavia having hidden talents was a wonder, and Octavia sticks out her tongue at her and scowls.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—I just never thought about it.”

“Lot you don’t think about,” Octavia murmurs.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. Then, annoyed, she lets the needle stick her finger and draws a drop of blood, which she sucks out between her teeth with a hiss. It does not hurt, like her other wounds did. But it’s stupid to have made such a mistake, and she curses herself in her head.

Raven’s leaning all the way back, one hand rubbing absently just above her own knee. Watching, quiet. “You okay?” she asks, only after a long moment, and Octavia sticks the needle in the jacket she’s sewing and throws it to the other side of the bed. The gesture makes her feel worse. Some days she’s just a petulant child again, and she doesn’t need anyone to tell her, and she doesn’t need anyone thinking it, either, watching her too patiently and waiting.

“You know this used to be the only thing I knew how to do,” she says, her voice so harsh it makes Raven’s eyes go wide. Octavia pulls up her heels, her knees to her chest.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my mom was a seamstress. And she taught me how to sew. But that was the only thing I was good for.”

“I know you knew other things. Didn’t Bellamy teach you—?”

“Bellamy _read_ to me.”

She sounds ungrateful; she hears it in her own voice. So she closes her eyes tight and hides them behind her hand until she’s calm again.

“And I know—that helped. I’m not saying I didn’t _learn_ things. I learned a lot of things. But everyone on the Ark…had a purpose, a skill. Or tons of skills, like you. I sewed sometimes, and everyone thought…everyone thought my mom was really fast, I guess. Shit, at first I was so bad at it, she had to redo it all, just made more work for her—”

“Hey.” The front legs of Raven’s chair thump down to the floor again, and she pulls it forward, so she can reach out and squeeze Octavia’s shoulder, just a little too hard. “Hey, you helped her. Sewing was helpful. And at the dropship camp, you did plenty of stuff, cured the meat—”

“Yeah but I’m talking about the _Ark_.”

She takes her hands from her face at last and pushes her hair from her face. Raven is staring at her, her expression soft and forgiving.

“If you didn’t learn to sew on the Ark, we’d freeze to death this winter,” she says, slow and simple like this is some inarguable truth. As if Octavia were the only one in the whole village who knew how to sew. But the way Raven’s looking at her now, it’s okay to believe, it’s okay to hold on to some half-truths so she feels useful and whole and filled in, so she’s not the hollow person she always fears she’s become. Some of this she’s shared with Raven, and some she has not. The most disturbing of it, she knows Raven can’t understand.

But she says the right things. She hands Octavia her sewing again. She keeps her company. And that’s enough.


	102. Bellamy/Clarke: Embrace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written October 2, 2018.
> 
> For eosdawns on tumblr.

Clarke is away for five days at a summit with the Grounder clans. Bellamy becomes tense without her, and easily irritated; he starts to feel a persistent ache in the space between his shoulder blades. When the Rover returns, he’s waiting just inside the gate, at attention, like he’s expecting royalty, like maybe he’s ingrained more lessons from the Guard than he would like. He doesn’t know how else to stand. He doesn’t know what to do when she climbs down from the passenger’s side, looking exhausted, but pleased, and walks toward him, and gives him a hug.

He hugs her back, but their touch is light. They make it a point not to be demonstrative in public. Still he hates it when, too soon, she pulls away.

“I’m starving,” she says.

He smiles. “It’s nice to see you, too.”

She still has her hands on his arms, fingers curled around his biceps, and now she gives them a squeeze and says, “That was implied.”

Over dinner, she tells him, and a small group of interested parties, about the negotiations, which were imperfect but progressed better than she’d thought they would. Eventually, Clarke starts to talk less, the others more. She leans against Bellamy as they finish their drinks, and then he makes an excuse for them to head off to bed.

He enters their room first, Clarke after him, and when he’s halfway to the bed he turns around and finds her leaning against the door, pale and sleepy, her legs half-buckled beneath her tilting weight. He raises an eyebrow and asks, “You think maybe the bed might be more comfortable?”

Clarke shakes her head. “No. Leave me here.” She gestures vaguely. “Go on—without me.”

He laughs and walks back to her, even considers for a moment picking her right up and bringing her to bed, but he doesn’t. He takes her hands instead, and pulls her forward, and she collapses into him and wraps her arms around in exactly the sort of warm embrace he’d imagined as he watched the Rover rumble through the gates.

“You’re so dramatic,” he says, and Clarke makes a quiet noise of protest against his shoulder.

At first, he is no more than the door: a solid, reliable presence to hold her weight. Even that he hardly minds. But then she steadies herself again on her feet, and wraps her arms more securely around him, and snuggles in against him, her nose and cheek against his chest. He holds her tightly in return.

Over the last five days, he’s held every detail of Clarke carefully in his mind, the memories preserved as if, perhaps, she would not come back; he’s too accustomed to such uncertainty. He always tries to be prepared for the worst. But remembering her is not the same as feeling her. He cannot capture this. The curve of her body as it fits against his; the softness of her; how she moves, sometimes, to hold him a little closer, to rub the tip of her nose against his t-shirt; how she sighs when she does this, so low that perhaps she doesn’t think he can hear.

“Come on,” he says, quietly. He means to walk her back to the bed, but he doesn’t move. “Time to sleep.”

“Tired of me already?” Clarke asks, and squeezes him again, almost too tight, a gesture in which he reads _I missed you_ and _I missed this_ and _I love you–_ everything they’ve long left unsaid. He presses a kiss into her hair, just above her ear.

“Never,” he answers. “Not at all.”


End file.
